Mythopoetics Final English Edition PDF

Mythopoetics
THE SYMBOLIC CONSTRUCTION

OF HUMAN IDENTITY
VOLUME I
MYTHIC DOMAIN
Oscar E. Muñoz
Translated by Nur Ferrante

Revised by the author
Mandala Ediciones
Mitopoética: La construcción simbólica de la identidad humana,
copyright © 2013 Oscar E. Muñoz.
Mythopoetics: The Symbolic Construction of Human Identity. Vol-
ume I:Mythic Domain, copyright © 2013 Oscar E. Muñoz. English
translation copyright © 2013 by Nur Ferrante. All rights reserved.
This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the

provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduc-
tion of any part may take place without the written permission of its
author.
Translation of: Mitopoética: La construcción simbólica de la identi-

dad humana by Nur Ferrante.
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To Gabriel, Alvar and Nur
CONTENTS
Preface to Volume I ix
General Preface xi
VOLUME I: MYTHIC DOMAIN
A. Introduction 15
B. Themes
Chapter 1. Men, Gods and Myths 21
1.1 Pre-Scientific Ontoepistemologies 21
1.2 Das Heilige 27
1.3 Four Traditional Ontoepistemological Categories of 36
Myths
Chapter 2. Language and Myth 71
2.1 Language Origin and Mythology 71
2.2 Metaphor and Literalness of Myths 94
Chapter 3. Forms of Memory and of the Understanding 111
3.1 Myth and History 111
3.2 Historical Consciousness and Mythologization 127
Chapter 4. Mimesis 147
4.1 Mimesis and Causality 147
4.2 Liminal Mimesis 159
4.3 Liminoid Mimesis 170
C. Some Conclusions 187
Appendixes
A. Cosmogonic Narratives 198
B. Process of Divinization-Mythologization 199
Bibliography Volume I 201
General Index Volume I 223
VOLUME II: PATHOS, LOGOS, MYTHOS
A. Introduction
B. Themes
Chapter 1. Emotions
1.1 Emotions in Rational Psychology
1.2 Evolutionist Perspectives
1.3 Emotional Neural Systems
1.4 Primary Emotions
Chapter 2. Cognition and Emotion
2.1 Communication and Emotion
2.2 Logic and Psychology
2.3 Continuous Rationality
2.4 Emotionality and Rationality of Myths
C. Some Conclusions
Appendixes
A. Cosmogonic Narratives
C. Neural Darwinism and Emotional Neural Systems
Bibliography Volume II
General Index Volume II
VOLUME III: MYTHICO-RITUAL AXES
A. Introduction
B. Themes
Chapter 1. Rite and Myth
1.1 Rite and Religion
1.2 Narrative and Identity
1.3 Semantic-Syntactic Structure of Narratives
1.4 Semantic Congruence and Ontological Inconsistency
Chapter 2. Mythical Actions
2.1 Social Action and Natural Action
2.2 Functional and Primitive Actions of Determination
2.3 Interpretative Mimetic Action: The Mythical Action
Chapter 3. Planes and Mythico-Ritual Axes
3.1 Typologies
3.1.1 Mythic Plane of the Anima Mundi
3.1.2 Mythic Plane of the King-God
3.1.3 Mythic Plane of the Universal Law
3.1.4 Mythic Plane of the Human Law
3.2 Relations
Chapter 4. Constructive Limits of Mythico-Ritual Axes
4.1 Mythopoetic Complexity and the Emotion of Play
4.2 Limits of Mythopoetic Complexity
Appendixes
B. Process of Divinization-Mythologization
D. Narrative Functions of Vladimir Propp Applied to the
Narratives of Nineteen Mythological Traditions
E. Redman’s Anthropological Model
F. Main Narratives and Persons of the Mythic Planes
Bibliography Volume III
General Index Volume III
Preface to Volume I
This edition in three volumes of Mythopoetics: the symbol-
ic construction of human identity, maintains basically the
structure and contents of its Spanish counterpart. The present
volume, Mythic Domain, corresponds, without major amend-
ments or extensions, to the first part of Mitopoética. It is a
reflection on the general problems faced by the traditional
science of mythology, exposing their scope and limitations,
but, at the same time, it also introduces some new intellectual
tools for the treatment of myth, like a theory of morphisms
and a theory of liminality and mimesis, tools that will be used
extensively throughout the rest of the book.
The feedback that I have received at the conferences where
I have presented some of the themes of this volume made me
realize that the main obstacle for the reception of a work like
this is the negative connotation that the word myth acquired in
the Western tradition after the European Enlightenment. My
definition of myth extends the traditional notions, not only
including elements of what has been called logos, but consid-
ering myth, or better, mythical action, as a wider process of
human communication in which the identity of a group is
mimetically constructed in relation to the general experience
of survival. Such a definition is stated at full length in volume
III, although in order to be understood requires not only the
ix
Preface to Volume 1
previous introduction of the conceptual tools presented in this

book, but also a full theory of emotions, developed in volume
II. The reluctance to the use of the word myth in relation to
scientific intellectual constructions, although particularly
strong among Platonists and other transcendental approaches
to science, is common to most objective ontologies. Curiously
enough, this objectivity of the world, a concept deeply chal-
lenged by our present neuroscientific knowledge as well as by
the epistemic constructions of quantum physics, operates so-
cially in equivalent manner to the dogmatic assumptions of
the old myths. It is impossible to see our own mythical system
from the inside: no symbolical system can be defined from
itself, or ascertain the truth of its sentences only with the help
of its elements. This is a corollary of Tarski’s theorem:1 the
truth of a symbolical system cannot be established using only
the elements of that system, or in other words, a symbolical
system cannot produce a semantical self-representation. The
postulate is beautifully simple and intuitive, but extremely
complex to apply to our own socio-psychological and episte-
mological valuations.
Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Nur Ferrante, who
with extraordinary patience and care translated to English this
difficult work.
1
See Alfred Tarski’s, Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics. Trans. J.H.
Woodger. Hackett Publishing Company. Indianapolis, IN. 1983. p.p 152
and s.q.
x
General Preface
I understand philosophical action as a dual process of axi-

omatic criticism and theoretical construction. When this ac-
tion is applied to the symbolic constructions of our identity, I
call it mythopoetics. For obvious reasons this book cannot but
aspire to be a big-scale sketch of an epistemological map of
human identity narratives, a schema which I have divided into
three parts. In the first two, I define the conceptual structure
which will be used in the third to develop a theory of mythical
action. The first is a general introduction to the problems of
mythology such as they have been dealt with from the point
of view of philosophy of religion, linguistics, history, aesthet-
ics and epistemology, merging them all into a more general
concept of philosophical anthropology. The second part fo-
cuses on the definition of emotions and on the understanding
of their centrality in relation to rationality and the structure of
myths. From the process of the semantic emotional develop-
ment of language, I construct a theory of continuous rationali-
ty in which animal rituals are understood as protomyths, and
human rituals and myths as an n-ary symbolic development of
some survival protocols. Both parts are, therefore, a discus-
sion about the necessary conceptual elements needed to un-
xi
General Preface
derstand mythico-ritual structures, defined and dealt with in

the third part, where I define the properties of interpretative
mimetic actions, or mythical actions, and examine the differ-
ent configurations they have taken along our symbolic devel-
opment. The book concludes with an analysis of the general
conditionings for the development of future mythical struc-
tures.
My ontoepistemological starting point is evolutionist,
emergentist and constructivist, a stance which is better ex-
pressed by the continuous rationality theory, of Aristotelian
inspiration, which assumes that vital processes display –in
different stages of complexity- the property of intelligence.
Avila, July 15th 2013.

O.M.
xii
VOLUME I
MYTHIC DOMAIN
A. Introduction
Mythological narratives are the only intellectual activity

that has been continuously practiced by human beings, a fact
that makes them a unique tool for thinking synthetically our
evolution as homo-sapiens. In this sense, they are the first
valuation settings that humans have made about themselves
and their environment, and as such, they have conditioned the
ones that have come afterwards, both in form and content.
Their communicative function places them at the basis of
social action. In fact, few human activities are so ubiquitous
and daily based as the narrative action, whether in the form of
traditional stories, which gather tales about the group’s identi-
ty and origins, or in the simple tales of daily life which consti-
tute ordinary communication, like the ones that give an or-
dered account of the day’s course, or the projects for the mor-
row. We are used to think narratively, generating more or less
closed scenarios, with characters and objects, either material
or conceptual, which have a set of relations organized accord-
ing to the sequentiality of our intuition. We start from the
models of our particular tradition, and inherit with them a set
of concepts, densely interpreted within cultural processes,
whose metaphorical contents show their belonging to some
myth. Even in the spheres where it has been deliberately at-
tempted to leave behind any mythological link, we find our
15
Introduction
thought permeated by notions whose origin is mythological.

Such is the case, for example, of Western legal systems which
are based upon the idea of positive law, for despite of having
developed a structured system of thought according to chains
of syllogistic reasoning, contain concepts as elements of the
system whose origin is mythological, as that of equality be-
fore the law, whose origin can be traced back to Christian
theology, in the idea of the formal equality among all men in
relation to the sovereign will of God.2 The genealogy is not
only conceptual, but also ritual at a more basic psychological
level, since the very same representations of trials date back
to the ancient ceremonies of old mythologies. We cannot be
surprised by the mythic root of most of our concepts and sys-
tems of social order, for our symbolic constructions were
originated in the vital process that began long before our
modern social structures. In one way or another, myths belong
to social life and have an interpretation in relation to the past
life of the group, forming a narrative scheme that entails a
specific worldview.
Myths are linked to the psychological formation of our
personality. Unperceptively the tales of the community
shaped the features that we consider our values. We discover
our individuation thinking a tale, identifying ourselves with
some character, inventing a personal identity from some of
the narratives that the group has to offer, through an imitative
action that spontaneously shapes us. The myth is sung by the
shaman, the poet, the prophet, the sage, but it is transmitted as
well by the mother and the master, in a process of encultura-
2
I will write God, in capital letters, with the sense of a proper name for the
Christian divinity, as Yahweh for the Jew, Allah for the Muslim, Brahman
for the Hindu, etc. When in lower case letters, it designates the general
concept.
16
Introduction
tion that is continued in all spheres of social life. The majority

of the world’s mythological traditions relate the origins as the
appearance of the gods or the ancestors out of preceding cha-
otic states, as if after a given instant, the thought focused and
the world emerged. Just like the child, the group awoke within
the narrative of its own identity, a tale that was first a rather
automatic animal action, to later advance towards more re-
flective processes. However, its awakening was not like the
child’s, into a closed and playful environment, but it occurred
entirely inside the uncertainty of life. It was an active awaken-
ing, involved in a humanity that was already in progress, liv-
ing and dying, who interpreted their actions according to their
limited means, thinking after their small scenarios that which
experience was showing to them, and projecting it over the
horizon of their ignorance. The tales that remained, that en-
dured the abyss of time, became fixed: if they had served to
interpret existence up to that point and to survive according to
those values, the conformity with the world proved their va-
lidity, and as an extra-cellular DNA its repetition was proto-
colled in the group’s customs by all possible means, univer-
salizing its contents as the way of things.
Our everyday contact with myths makes them unproblem-
atic cultural objects, although the transparency is lost when
we closely examine their connotations and denotations. For
this reason, it is indispensable to establish a basic terminology
and an historical context for mythology as a philosophical
problem. I will begin by delimiting the mythic domain from
the points of view by which it has been addressed in philoso-
phy of religion and anthropology. To this end, I will examine
the ontological dimension of the different mythological tradi-
tions and the hierarchies that are established among the enti-
ties of myths. Secondly, I will ponder on myth from a linguis-
17
Introduction
tic vantage point, revising the most relevant theses postulated

in relation to its metaphorical dimension, and proposing a
simple model concerning the linguistico-epistemological
function of determination of experience that myths gather. I
will next move on to consider the relations between myth and
history, examining the scope of myth’s traditional domain
within fields that are considered historical. I will finish by
discussing myth in relation to its composition, that is, from
the point of view of the mimesis, a process in which, from the
narrative action, the subject as well as the object and the sce-
narios of its experience are determined. The purpose of this
argumentative line of thought is to obtain a preliminary defi-
nition of the mythic domain, as well as of the different con-
cepts that are included in the definition.
18
B. Themes
CHAPTER 1
Men, Gods and Myths
1.1 Pre-Scientific Ontoepistemologies
Anthropological studies show that every known human

group has a form of narrative communication, whether oral or
written, where the collective representations that constitute
their identity traits concerning their origin and the world’s are
gathered, narratives which include the beliefs of the group in
relation to life and death, and the ways to organize both.
These tales, called mythos in the Greek world, and from then
on in the Western philosophical tradition, are ubiquitous in
human societies, and from an axiological and organizational
point of view, they have a central role in the community
where they belong. Traditional myths gather the notions that a
community had about the way things are, how the world be-
gan, what is the place of men and the gods, how these are
related, which are their linages, what are life and death, what
difficulties were surmounted and which ones resulted in fail-
21
CHAPTER 1: Men, Gods and Myths
ure, how the city arose, which are its laws and its enemies…
From our epistemological point of view, after the triumph of
modern science, it is characteristic of myths the fact that its
ideas are not organized into theories, but are integrated into
narratives whose protagonists and places have proper names.
On the other hand, anthropology shows that mythic narratives
seem to have a wider social functionality within archaic socie-
ties than they have in ours, since in the former, myths are
lived within the actions of the community, and many of them
are ceremonially performed. Such functionality, integrative of
the community’s life, is possible due to the fact that these
narratives contain the fundamental ontological valuations and
epistemological constructions by which the physical environ-
ment is manipulated.
Traditional myths entail an epistemology associated, in a
more or less conscious manner, to the ontology they express.
If we observe, for instance, the creation myth of Memphis
(Egypt), Ptah creates with his word the other gods, humans
and animals, as well as the earth and orography. This implies
an explicitation of the final referents of creation, the divine,
the human, and the physis, as well as a genetical hierarchy
among them, besides the proclamation of the word as the
center of knowledge, that is, of intelligence and the means to
communicate it. Here, word and intelligence have their origin
in the gods, which implies that wisdom is theology, whose
foundations cannot be known but through some form of reve-
lation, as it is also in the case of the Sumerian-Akkadian
myths, in which the gods are responsible for the natural, but
also for the civilizing or cultural order, governing over the
whole of human experience. If, on the contrary, we study the
tale of the androgynous giant Ymir of Nordic mythologies,
whereby the gods, the world and humans (as we know them
22
today), sprang from this anthropomorphic being, the ontology

that is transmitted presents an inverse hierarchy to the one
afore mentioned, that places the human, idealized, at the zen-
ith. In this ontology, it is told about Ragnarok or the dusk of
the gods after which a new cosmic cycle will begin where a
human couple (under the tree Yggdrassil) will give birth to
the constituents of a new humanity. Knowledge here cannot
be at the hands of the gods, above mortals, because gods will
disappear, and the universe will continue. Cleverness and
effort, not revelation, will be the epistemological paradigms in
a universe ruled by these principles, but when the ontological
hierarchies are surmounted by the gods we can expect nothing
but knowledge by revelation.
The first ontoepistemologies of humanity have been ex-
pressed in mythic narratives, and in this sense constitute the
first scientific records (if we understand by science, general
knowledge) about the human being and its place in the world.
This form of knowledge would endure, as Kant 3 perceived,
even if barbarism destroyed the rest of sciences, and not be-
cause of the need that reason has of a speculative thought that
may establish transcendental conditions for the experience of
existence, but due to the practical necessity of a generalizing
thinking that may grant adaptive advantages. The ontologies
collected by myth do not constitute a first science in the Aris-
3
Kant’s commentary in the Critique of Pure Reason refers to metaphysics
as speculative thought which is not based on experience, while the ontology
of myths is already an interpretation of the former, although not in the terms
that we understand today the concept of experience. See BXIV. Critique of
Pure Reason. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge.UK. 2000. p. 109.
My references to the Critique of Pure Reason will be the ones of this edi-
tion, and I will only give as reference of the work the traditional numeration
in sections that appear in it.
23
totelian sense, an study of being qua being,4 since in myth

what is there, i.e., the semantic content of the narrative, is not
reflected by the mere fact of its being there, but treated in
relation to the relevance that the tale in particular has for a
given historical community. However, myths are indeed a
first science in the anthropological sense, they are a first form
of organizing experience and accounting for what we per-
ceive, so we can think about them as some sort of archeologi-
cal fragments of epistemology. The fact that under a subse-
quent historical perspective (from a different myth) the com-
munity’s archaic narratives may seem naïve or even halluci-
nated, does not diminish their human value for survival. That
we know them today bears witness for their success as a pre-
serving vehicle of social identity, and only their negative to a
critical examination discredits them as conceptual construc-
tions with an epistemological scope to our present. In myths,
we assist to what we could paradoxically express as a univer-
sal locality: that which is narrated in them is supposed to be
universally valid, but it is expressed, inevitably, within a local
scenario. Every myth is placed at the center of the world, and
what is narrated there is the way in which things were and
what can be derived from them. The majority of priestly
mythological traditions place the divine beings at the begin-
ning of the world, while in traditions which represent simpler
social orders, as it is the case of Australian Aborigines, or
Native Americans, that narrative position is occupied by the
ancestors.
4
Aristotle. Metaphysics. Book Γ. 17-31. The Complete Works of Aristotle.
Vol.II. Princeton. Bollingen Series LXXI. p.1584. My references to the
works of Aristotle will be the ones of this edition, and I will only give as
reference of his works the traditional numeration in sections that appear in
it.
24
Functional similarities among the ancestors and gods at the

narrative and ontoepistemological levels discredit the tradi-
tional distinction between mythological and religious tales.
Although some authors, like Dilthey, conceded the functional
social analogy of both types of tales, even extending it to the
narratives of metaphysics,5 philosophy has not been prone to
give such a functional status to the ontoepistemological di-
mension of myth. The dispute is already at the origin of phi-
losophy, filled with ambiguities and not exempt from contra-
dictions.6 The Diltheyan reticence is sustained on a Greek and
Christian double pillar. On the one hand, it occurs a rejection
of mythological tales for representing non-moral principles in
which to base a rational ethic. This objection manifests a sys-
temic prejudice conditioned by the belief in supernatural be-
ings, since a rational ethics in merely human terms does not
need any kind of god to give consistency to its edifice, and
supernaturals can be conceived in a more aesthetic and psy-
chological fashion, as it is observed in Protagoras, Euripides
or Epicure. On the other hand, we basically find in Dilthey’s
rejection the Christian identity narrative, the postulate of a
radically new form of human consciousness which imposes
itself as such over rival mythologies. The Diltheyan thesis that
religion, as different from mythology, is characterized by a
degree of psychological insight which is unique to it, is con-
tradicted, within the frame of Greco-Roman culture itself, by
the diverse initiatory rites, many of them undistinguishable
from the ones that Christianism performed later, almost in the
5
See Wilhem Dilthey, Introduction to the Human Sciences. Wayne State
University Press. Detroit 1988. p.161.
6
Like the contradictions implied by the theological rhetoric that Parmenides
uses in the Preface, or when Plato speaks about the knowledge of truth
through myths at the end of the Republic.
25
same geographical locations and in the same days of the year.

The Eleusinian mysteries, those of Osiris, or Attis, besides
having the same functionality as the fundamental Christian
rites of birth and death, produced similar psychological forms,
since they narrated equivalent plots, with equivalent intellec-
tual and emotional representations that served to forge an
identity from which to interpret vital actions. If, on the other
hand, we go out from the self-absorbed mythological atmos-
phere of the Book’s religions,7 and observe the case of Hindu
religion, the distinction is completely irrelevant, as it occurs
paradigmatically in the case of the Bhagavad Ghita, where the
most archaic mythological tales are merged with religion as
well as with Samkya philosophy and Vedanta. To Dilthey, in
mythological conceptions, men see the structure of phenome-
na merely based on the living will. Vital experience does not
become yet an object of knowledge for human understanding,
as it will occur later in metaphysics, while religious experi-
ence is always something internal that never finds a satisfac-
tory external representation.8
Both the equivalent social functionality of ancient myths,
religion and metaphysics, and its ontoepistemological func-
tional equivalence -which produces synthesis like the ones we
observe in Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, Christian-
ism or Islam- demand a metron, a conceptual referent from
which to tackle the distinctions between these intellectual
actions, if there are any.
7
I refer to Judaism, Christianism and Islam.
8
Cf. Dilthey. Ibid. p.162.
26
1.2 Das Heilige.
A candidate as conceptual referent that may clarify the

position of mythology in relation to religion and metaphysics
would be that of the sacred, das Heilige, 9 present in these
three spheres. However, the attempts to understand mytholo-
gy choosing supernatural categories as foundation, not only
das Heilige, but the ideas of god, soul and the like, have only
served to expose the conceptual contradictions that they en-
tail. We have an example in Taylor’s animist theory, which is
problematic at two epistemological points. 10 To Taylor, the
notion of soul is the result of confusing objective and subjec-
tive experiences which characterizes the thought of archaic
societies, 11 a confusion which leads to a mixture and inter-
change between the oneiric world and that of ordinary experi-
ence. The fundamental concept of the theory is therefore that
of an error, which would force us to discard myths also as
errors, hence, putting an end to any further investigation. On
the other hand, saying that myths are an error does not explain
the evident success and advantages obtained by human com-
munities through their use, i.e., it is a theory without explica-
9
I will use the German term to emphasize its general philosophical use, not
limited to the particular definitions of any tradition.
10
Durkheim was already conscious of the first one. See Emile Durkheim.
Las formas elementales de la experiencia religiosa. Translated by Ana
Martínez Arancón. Alianza Editorial. Madrid. 2008. p.126. (English edition:
Durkheim, Emile. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Translated by
Karen E. Fields. The Free Press. New York. 1995.)
11
Cf. Edward B. Tylor. Early History of Mankind and the Development of
Civilization. Estes & Lauriat. Boston. 1878. p.6.
27
tive validity. The second problem stems not only from the
specific oneiric characterization of the concept of soul, but
from the general concept itself, which as Kant already
showed, is a paralogism of reason, and therefore, a concept
upon which we could hardly base a consistent description of
mythology. Kantian arguments, even though based on catego-
ries whose intended transcendental validity cannot be proven,
are consistent in relation to the invalidity of the universaliza-
tion of an existential statement: it can neither be proven that
the soul is substance, nor that it is simple, nor that it is immor-
tal, since the I (I think) has empirical content, and we could
not deduce anything transcendental (necessary) from it, that
is, of universal validity.12 Although rational psychology can
tell us what the soul is not, from its definition as concept and
from the general logical relations which govern the form of all
thinking (from the particular cannot be deduced the univer-
sal), it could never tell us what the soul is, because the posi-
tive knowledge of something physical entails experience.
Rational psychology, which Kant considered a way to protect
the thinking subject from the dangers of materialism, presup-
poses a kingdom of the transcendental which is nothing but a
final ontological valuation that closes the possibility of any
anthropological explanations of psychology, something that,
from my point of view, discards its validity in relation to the
knowledge of the subject’s constitution as well as of its myth-
ological actions. On the other hand, not only the idea of the
soul is a paralogism, but the notion of das Heilige itself, by
pointing to a necessary being, produces antinomic reason-
ing.13
12
See. Critique of Pure Reason. B406.
13
See Critique of Pure Reason. A452/B480 and following.
28
1.2 Das Heilige
The concept of das Heilige as something mysterious and

irrational, although at the base of mythological narratives and
religious experience, was first theologically shaped by Rudolf
Otto, and later by Mircea Eliade in their texts on the philoso-
phy of religion.14 Otto’s work tries to lay the foundation of
religion on Kantian epistemology, merging the rational con-
struction of the first and second Critiques with the Theory of
Genius of the third. The amalgamating concept will be, pre-
cisely, das Heilige, considered as an a priori category, with
the additional component of possessing, simultaneously, a
double rational and non-rational property.15 The rational one
is due to its a priori or transcendental dimension, independent
of experience, which allows a philosophical knowledge of the
reality which is pointing at. On the other hand, the irrationali-
ty of das Heilige is a property of religious experience, some-
thing more intuitive and spontaneous that we find, for in-
stance, in the behavior of prophets, saints and geniuses. The
contradictory double property of das Heilige already implies a
serious epistemological problem, solved by the claim that it is
an a priori category, a pure concept of the understanding that
is transcendentally found in the subject without being condi-
tioned by actual experience. 16 But this Ottian thesis contra-
dicts the Kantian epistemological edifice which pretends to be
its justification, since pure concepts of the understanding can-
not be complex, because that would imply that they can be
14
In Mircea Eliade, Lo sagrado y lo profano. Translated by Luis Gil.
Ed.Labor. Barcelona. 1985. (English Edition: Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred
and the Profane. Translated by Willard R. Trask. Harvest Book Harcourt,
Inc. New York. 1987.)
15
Cf. Rudolf Otto. The Idea of the Holy. Translated by John W. Harvey.
Oxford University Press. London. 1936. p.116.
16
See the first chapter of the Analytic of Concepts in the Critique of Pure
Reason for a reference frame on the present discussion.
29
analyzable and derivable from others still more basic, some-

thing that contradicts the Kantian definition of category. We
could think that das Heilige is a pure derivative concept,17 but
that would make it non-central to the knowledge and experi-
ence of the world, which in turn contradicts the thesis that
Otto’s book offers as a whole, as well as one of the explicit
characterizations that Otto makes of das Heilige as an original
and underivable capacity of the mind.18
Otto’s argumentative inconsistencies are not eluded by the
mere inclusion of a non-rational dimension from which any-
thing can be justified. The inconsistencies are produced by
maintaining an idea of divinity which is complex (compound)
and at the same time claiming that such an idea is a category.
But even a thesis postulating das Heilige as a simple category,
say, the category of unity (of the group of categories of quan-
tity), would find similar epistemological difficulties within the
Kantian system. These are the difficulties that rational philos-
ophy had as a whole since Greek idealism: the link between a
purely intellective and ideal sphere with the world of experi-
ence. Kant tried to interpose between that subtle realm -alien
to the world- and the world itself, the full machinery of his
transcendental logic, constructed upon the pure intuitions of
space and time. This implied a double character for space and
time: as concepts a priori and as conditions of the possibility
of representations, a double nature both experiential and ex-
tra-experiential which made them complex, and consequently,
contradictory with their condition of pure and primary intui-
tion. On the other hand, if it were postulated that space and
time, as links between the transcendental realm and experi-
17
Concepts mentioned at a glance by Kant in B107.
18
Cf. Otto. Ibid. p.116.
30
1.2 Das Heilige
ence, were mere forms of intuition, and that such forms had,
by definition, an irreducible and simple synthetic condition,
that would imply that the link between the transcendental and
experience is isomorphic, and so reality would not be an ap-
pearance, as Kant maintains, in fact, such a postulate would
destroy Kant’s edifice. Kantian categories, without a doubt
the weakest point of his work, only make sense if we change
their transcendental content for a biological content, and de-
fine the a priori of our thinking in terms of biology, as we will
see further on.
Besides the epistemological objections to the argumenta-
tive validity of both supernatural concepts and natural tran-
scendental ones à la Kant, there are also anthropological diffi-
culties, no less relevant, in the concept of das Heilige. For
instance, even though Otto’s treatment of das Heilige as mys-
terium estupendum et tremendum is found in the Hindu, 19
Buddhist, Jewish and Christian traditions,20 and although in
one way or another it is implicit in the treatment that human
beings have made of their existence in different religious tra-
ditions, the concept of mysterium tremendum, which we could
also denominate the terrible presence (for its implications),
does not have enough scope for a complete characterization of
mythic narratives and their functionality in human communi-
19
As we read in the Bhagavad Ghita, a book which Otto had commented, in
which there is a theophany of Krishna as The Absolute that terrifies Arjun.
Tell me who Thou art with form so terrible. Salutation to Thee, O Thou
Great Godhead, have mercy. Bhagavad-Ghita. 11.31. Edited in A Source-
book in Indian Philosophy. Princeton University Press. Princeton 1989.
p.140.
20
See the examples of these traditions provided by Otto in chapters X, XI
and XII concerning the numinous. The numinous refers to the supernatural
dimension of objects and actions whose content is transcendent and inscru-
table in a rational manner.
31
ties. The terrible presence is, on the one hand, the psycholog-
ical experience of the becoming of existence, the continuous
creation and destruction of life, and on the other, the contrast
between the limitations of individuality and the immense ex-
tension and power of nature, an experience which produces
both pain and irresistible attraction. From this point of view,
what is central to religious experience is the manifestation of
a supernatural being that presents itself as a reality of differ-
ent order than nature.21 Its postulates are well-known, since
they represent the point of view of the great religions that still
thrive today. However, from an anthropological perspective,
this supernatural aspect taken in isolation is not the unique
content of mythic narratives. For instance, all the pragmatic
matters collected by the general tales of enculturation, and
which constitute the main heritage of archaic cultures, are left
out. Furthermore, anthropological experience shows that the
qualification of an action or an object as sacred does not fol-
low any universal principle -as Durkheim22 had already point-
ed out- and in fact, there are situations that could be consid-
ered sacred as well as profane, depending on the tradition
from which we make the interpretation. Consider, as an ex-
ample, the sacred content of the papal bulls of the Church of
Rome, or the Aztec human sacrifices, or the diverse forms of
ritual cannibalism, or the self-castration of the priests of Attis
when they entered into the service of Cybele, or the sexual
rituals of the Maithuna Tantra. The concept of das Heilige, as
a substantive, seems to be a subsequent reification of the ad-
jectival pair sacred-profane which modifies subjects as well
as objects and actions, since in all primitive communities we
21
Cf. Mircea Eliade. Lo sagrado y lo profano. (The Sacred and the Pro-
fane). Ed. Cit. p. 18.
22
Cf. Emile Durkheim. Op.Cit. p.p.78.
32
1.2 Das Heilige
find such qualifications, but not necessarily a deliberate intel-

lectual reflection about the quality common to all things sa-
cred. Practically, any object or action can be considered as
das Heilige, in fact, the same action within the same tradition
–let us think about a hunting action that has not been ritual-
ized according to the appropriate protocols- can be sacred or
profane depending on the circumstances, or a person or object
can be pure or impure, that is, apt for das Heilige or not,
merely by its proper treatment in an established ritual. Objects
are not sacred merely for the dignified and respectful treat-
ment they received: das Heilige is not merely a reverential
attitude in relation to objects, subjects and actions which in
other circumstances would be disrespectfully or indifferently
treated. The fetish which represents the supernatural being
and with whom one is discontent, is beaten; stones are thrown
against the divine pond to upbraid the gods and make them
come out and bring the rain.23 Das Heilige does not necessari-
ly coincide with the sanctimonious, neither with the decent,
nor the solemn, not even with the gods. We find a fairly re-
cent example of this in the bustling religious activity of India.
In March 11th 2001, a wealthy24 Indian citizen consecrated a
temple of cricket in Madras under the tutelary protection of
Ganesh, son of Shiva. After the cricket final World Cup of
2003, Ganesh’s head was substituted by the eleven heads of
the Indian team, and specific religious practices have been
developed ever since, even cricket mantras. Such a consecra-
tion, besides revealing the latent religious functions of sports,
especially when they are practiced at a level of national com-
23
Ibid. p. 79.
24
K.R. Ramakrishnan. The temple is in Annagar, Chennai (Madras). There
are multiple references on the Web.
33
petition and involve questions of wide social identities, shows

the irrelevance of the concept of god in relation to das
Heilige, an irrelevance which is exemplified (in a more con-
vincing manner than the isolated example of cricket) in the
atheist religions of Jainism and Buddhism, whose followers
sacralize the world just like in any of the theological religions.
The attempt to understand the concept of das Heilige as an
adjective which qualifies objects, subjects and actions, has
become ineffective. Neither its opposition to the profane is
clear when seen from outside the specific system where it
happens, nor do the qualifications of their difference follow
conceptually consistent criteria. In any case, consecration is a
collective psychological action of valuation (of subjects, ob-
jects or other actions), and like any other social action must
obey some purpose, some end related to the economic activi-
ties of the group. The consecrative valuation actions seem to
establish specific orders among the general economic actions
of a community, or more precisely, establish reference frames
within the actions that load them with an additional content,
that of das Heilige, which confers a place to each action with-
in the group’s order, linked at the same time to the order of
the world. From a formal point of view, the content of the
constructed relation, the particular interpretation of the con-
cept of das Heilige, is irrelevant, as it is proven by the fact of
its relative practical independence in relation to other con-
cepts such as those of god and religion, to which at first
seemed to refer to in an exclusive manner. Any pair of oppo-
site symbols that favors some actions in relation to others will
be valid to generate determinations of reference, ordering the
world in an analogous manner to das Heilige, although they
must be symbols known to the entire group, and have a rela-
tion to the bulk of its activities. This ordering content is what
34
1.2 Das Heilige
links the concept of das Heilige to that of authority, from

which it obtains its normative force.
Human history is not exempt of mystery, but it is a mys-
tery under the noonday sun, without the need for additional
complexities of misty concepts and phantasmagorical con-
structions. The notion that the world is only understandable to
the human being in as much as it is a sacred world, and there-
fore irrational, is refuted by the vital praxis of the modern
world and the epistemological practice of science, which does
not need the oppositions between faith and reason that was the
common tone of Christian philosophy. The thesis of the world
as mysterium does not make our experience more intelligible,
and its failure is not because it declares certain evident limits
for our knowledge (we can always find a residue in experi-
ence that is not easily subsumed to our way of thinking), but
for the reason that it binds any possible cognition by placing
ignorance at the center of our system of thought and vital
valuations, with the additional consequence that it leads to
declare any knowledge of natural experience as illusory, since
we know nothing about true reality, and our life is nothing but
ignorance and error.
Supernatural concepts serve only for inconsistent founda-
tions of metaphysics, but not to explain the function of myths,
since they do not offer anything that was not already con-
tained within their initial ontological suppositions, which, as
any other ontological principle, are not demonstrable, an in-
demonstrability which is the starting point for the definitions
of the supernatural. If we are to judge an ontological principle
by its epistemological fertility and by the vitality of its impli-
cations in social experience, das Heilige’s proposal does not
tell us anything that we did not already know from the obser-
vation of religious experiences, and simply emphasizes the
35
separation of the sphere of mythology in relation to the sphere

of the natural. In fact, by negating the most evident interpreta-
tion –the one that ascribes the action of consecration to a hu-
man group (with all its ideological conditionings), and not to
a supernatural irrational entity-, the theses that interpret myths
based on the concept of das Heilige, simply veil an anthropo-
logical action with theological principles.
1.3 Four Traditional Ontoepistemological

Categories of Myths
A second possible candidate as conceptual referent for the

characterization of myth in relation to religion and metaphys-
ics, could be the ontoepistemological structure of narratives
taken anthropologically, without reference to das Heilige. If
we examine the tales about the origins of the main traditional
mythologies of the world,25 we can observe that all of them
contain four basic elements: human being, god (or supernatu-
ral being), nature (or world), and chaos (or disorder), which
25
The traditional mythologies whose tales about the origins I have exam-
ined are those of: Sumer-Akkad, Babylon, Egypt (Heliopolis, Thebes,
Memphis, Ogdoad of Hermopolis), Hittite, Caananite, Phenician, Phrygian,
Iranian, Jew (Traditional and Kabbalisic), Christian, Islamic (Sunni and
Shia), Minoan, Greek (Olympic and Orphic), Roman, Hellenistic, Celt,
Nordic, Geto-Dacian, Finno-Ugric, Slav, Chinese (Traditional and Taoist),
Buddhism (Indian, Chinese, Zen), Jainism, Hinduism (Veda, Brahmanism,
Vishnuism), Shinto, Korean, Vietnamese, Turk-Mongol, Nahua, Maya,
Quechua, Navaho, Pueblo, Iroquois, Cherokee, Choctaw, Kwakiutl, Inuit,
Black Foot, Muisca, Guarani, Mapuche, Yoruba, Masai, Bushongo, Batusi,
Australians, Melanesians and Polynesians. This is the main group from
which I have obtained the mythological data I handle in this book, extracted
out of the diverse mythological sources that appear in the bibliography.
36
1.3 Four Traditional Ontoepistemological Categories of Myths
very easily interchange their identities and are hybridized,

following a clear anthropomorphic tendency. Thus, for in-
stance, is not strange to find chaotic beings who are nature
elements (water, fire) and can take animal forms (some kind
of ophidian or aquatic monster), but that at the same time are
primordial gods or titans -whose behavior is human at an
emotional level- or even demonized kings of rival tribes to
whom a hero defeats.26 Traditional myths are not ruled by the
principle of contradiction in relation to the identities of their
actors, but if we observe the actions that they perform, we can
see that some of these four elements are more active and ge-
netically prior to the others, determining different ontological
scenarios. Actually, the four of them together do delimit, in a
wider sense, mythic narratives, but they could also serve to
characterize almost any set of human experiences, for they
offer such a general scenario that it is impossible to imagine a
communicative human action which may not be somehow
related to men, the gods, or the natural world. But, what is the
hierarchy of these categories? Have the four of them the same
fundamental ontological content?
A first group of ontological scenarios concerning the ori-
gins is the one formed by narratives where the active main
element is the human being, or more precisely, a very old
anthropomorphic principle from which all cosmic actions are
derived. Obviously, any ontological scenario has the human
being as its final referent insofar as it is constructed by hu-
mans, even when the narrative itself forgets this origin and
26
As examples of what otherwise would be a long list: Apsu and Tiamat,
and the king Kingu who helps them against Marduk (Sumer-Akkad-
Babylon), Vrta (India), Indra’s enemy, Typhoon antagonist of Zeus (Gree-
ce), Caicai Vilu who fights against Trentren (Mapuche), or the fights of the
mythic Yao with the water dragons.
37
places another element at the center. In traditional myths, we

find explicitly anthropocentric scenarios in the tale of the
Purusha that can be read in the tenth mandala of the Rigve-
da.27 As the myth tells, Purusha is all that has been and all that
will be, it fills space completely and there is nothing before
nor after. It is an androgynous being with a thousand heads
and eyes, who gives off a feminine principle out of itself –an
egg called Virat- to whom its masculine part will immediately
impregnate giving birth to itself. The gods are born by parti-
tion of the original Purusha, and they perform a sacrifice with
the second one (the newly born) in order to create the physical
world and humans as we know them today. Purusha precedes
the creation of the gods and the world, who are a secondary
result: the universe starts from a human principle, and both its
components and its actions occur inside of it. Among other
tales which take a primordial human being as substrate of the
universe, we find the narrative of the Iranian giant Gayo-
mart,28 or the tale of the biblical Genesis, where the androgy-
nous Adam, by parthenogenesis, gives rise to Eve, who will
be the mother of all humans. In Jain tradition, the entire uni-
verse is the body of a cosmic human or Jiva, whose atoms are
men, animals, plants and minerals, in a transmigratory move-
ment. 29 From this multitude of animo-atomic monads, indi-
vidual humans are the most evolved in a universal process
that neither has a beginning nor an end, and is not governed
27
The Hymns of Rigveda. Chant 90. Motilal Banarsidas Publishers. Private
Limited. Delhi. 1999. p.p. 602-603.
28
In the Shahname of Ferdusi it is cited as the first human king. See also,
Mircea Eliade. A History of Religious Ideas. (3 Vol.) Translation by Willard
R. Trask. University of Chicago Press. 1978. Vol.II. p.268.
29
See Heinrich Zimmer, Philosophies of India. Princeton University Press.
Princeton 1989. p.p.241-248.
38
by any type of divine being, but by a self-contained spiritual-

ized matter. Another myth that expresses the ontological
preeminence of the human element is the Maori called The
Sons of the Sky (Nga Tama a Rangi), in which instead of the
idea of the androgynous Purusha is that of a primordial human
couple, Rangi (Sky) and Papa (Earth) who are united in a
continuous embrace and from whom a vast offspring is gener-
ated.30 From this couple’s separation, undertaken by their son
Tane -lord of the forests-, the world and all its creatures will
be created. We find a variation of this myth in the dismem-
berment of Huitzlopochtli’s sister, Coyolxauhqui, whose
head, being thrown to the night sky by Huitzlopochtli, be-
comes the moon. 31 The battle between Huitzlopochtli and
Coyolxauhqui happens at Coatepec -the sacred mountain-,
formed by the same dismembered body of the goddess, and
which, at the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan, was associated
to the sacred mountain of sustenance, Tonacatepetl, presided
by Tlaloc,32 the fertility god. We find another variant in the
Quechua myth of Pachacamac in the creation of corn, manioc
and other plants from the body of First Woman’s son.33 And
something similar occurs in the myth of the Iroquois when
Hahgwehdiyu - creator god-, plants corn in the body of his
30
See the myth in G.Grey, Polynesian Mythology. Whitcombe and Tombs.
Christchurch (NZ). 1956.
31
As it shows the relief at the Templo Mayor of Tenotchtitlan where the
myth appears.
32
See Linda Manzanilla, Construction of Underworld in Central Mexico. In
Carrasco, David; Jones, Lindsay; Sessions, Scot. Editors. Mesoamerica´s
Classic Heritage: from Teotihuacan to the Aztecs. The University Press of
Colorado. Boulder 2002. P.p. 98-99.
33
See the myth in the work of Antonio de la Calancha, Crónica moralizada
de la orden de San Agustín en Perú. (Moralized Chronicle of the Order of
Saint Augustine in Peru). C.S.I.C. Madrid. 1972.
39
mother, Atahensic. 34 In another version of the same myth,

Atahensic falls from the sky, and dies giving birth to all
things. Among the Navaho, as in the case of the Polynesians,
the first substance of this world is a human couple, and the
orography, as well as the entire physical world, is human.35 A
variant of these myths, now completely theologized, is found
in a Yoruba tale where Orunmila, god of the oracles, gener-
ates the spirits with the remains of Obatala’s body.36
On the other hand, we find mythologies in which, even
though the main active element is still human, do not consider
a pan-anthropic universe, but the human principle occupies a
place among others, to which we could call mero-anthropic
cosmogonies. In these tales, chaos precedes the rise of the
human principle, as it happens in the Chinese myth of Pan
Gu37 or the Scandinavian of Ymir.38 In the former, Pan Gu, an
anthropomorphic being, springs from a big cosmic egg -one
of the common representations of the primordial indefinite- to
later produce by dismemberment -as in the case of the Puru-
sha- the rest of things: his head turns into a sacred mountain,
34
See the myth in the version of Douglas M. George-kanentiio, Skywoman:
Legends of the Iroquois. Clear Light Books. 1995. Santa Fé. New Mexico.
35
Cf. Gladys A. Reichard, Navaho Religion: A Study of Symbolism. Prince-
ton University Press. Princeton, N.J. 1990. p.20.
36
See the myth of the destruction of Obatala in the work of Ngangar Mbitu
and Ranchor Prime, Essential African Mythology. Thorsons. San Francisco
(California). 1997.
37
The myth is gathered for the first time in the period of the Three King-
doms (220-280-d.c). There is a translation of The Ancient Miao Song in Wu
Xiaodong. The Rhinoceros Totem and Pangu Myth: An Exploration of the
Archetype of Pangu. Oral Tradition, 16/2 (2001): p.p.364-380.Web.
38
Edward Werner made an analysis of the parallels between these two
myths in Myths and Legends of China (1922). In Sacred-Texts. com.Web.
See the Bibliography (note 1) for the footnotes’ protocol that I use in Myth-
opoetics.
40
his eyes, into the sun and moon, his fat into the oceans and
rivers, his hair into the trees and plants.39 In Nordic mytholo-
gy, the body of the giant Ymir, sprang from the clashes pro-
duced between the chaotic ice and the fire, at the same time as
the cow Aumbla, and from his body the orography and living
beings also emerged, including gods and men as we know
them; from the dismemberment that Odin and his brothers
make of Ymir, the nine worlds are generated.40
In the mythologies of Sumer-Semitic origin, there is no an-
thropomorphic form for the first beings, but a theomorphosis
of humans, created as image of them. In every mythology
which takes the divine element as active principle, which can
be called ontotheological, there is a morphism41 between gods
and men (if this were not so, the relevance of the gods in the
human world would be null), a relation determined by three
different associations, which range from the god-men isomor-
phism, where the two worlds are equivalent representational
structures, to the auto-morphism, where the only reality is the
divine one, and the representation of the human world is a
mere illusion in relation to the representation of the gods,
which is called the true reality. Amid these two extremes we
also find the morphism of infinitude, in which the supposed
infinite distance between the divine and the human is saved
by sameness, a concept which links both without equalizing
them.42 We have isomorphic examples in Vedanta tradition,
39
See the reference to the Rigveda already mentioned above.
40
As it relates the Völuspa of the Icelanic Codex Regius. The texts are
found in Septentrionalia.net.Web.
41
By morphism, I understand the determination of a relation which links
two structures, and by structure I understand the ordered synthesis of a
plurality of representations.
42
This is the view of Saint Thomas of Aquinas, and with him, of the Catho-
lic Church. “A likeness that is found because two things share something in
41
where the equality of the principle of the transpersonal god,

Brahman, with the personal god, Atman, is proclaimed,43 or in
Zoroastrian religion, in which the cosmic fight between Good
and Evil occurs equally at the human plane, and where the
initiate commits to transfigure the Earth, scenario in which the
battle takes place.44 A bit more timidly, the isomorphism is
also postulated in Kabbalistic and Sufi traditions. The Kabba-
lah, in the book of the Bahir,45 tells us about Adam Cadmon
or the macroanthropos, who contains the pleroma of all the
eons and powers, in an ontological proposal that makes the
mystical representations equivalent to those of life itself, a life
which is a manifestation of that other world to which it is
closely linked. In Sufism, there are some cases of more ex-
plicit declarations, not of isomorphism alone, but of a full
common or because one has such a determinate relation to the other that
from one the other can be grasped by the intellect—such a likeness dimin-
ishes distance. A likeness according to an agreement of proportion does
not; for such a likeness is also found between things far or little distant.
Indeed, there is no greater likeness of proportionality between two to one
and six to three than there is between two to one and one hundred to fifty.
Consequently, the infinite distance between a creature and God does not
take away the likeness mentioned above.” Thomas of Aquinas. Questiones
Disputatae de Veritate . Cuestion 2. Art.11. Translated by James V.
McGlynn, S.J. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1953. Html edition by
Joseph Kenny, O.P. Web.
43
See the comentaries of Sankara to the Brahma Sutras. Ed. Swami
Vireswarananda. Advainta Ashrama. Kolkata. 2001. Also the Ghita (18.61)
had proclaimed such unity.
44
See Zarathustra’s Leyend of Creation and the Gathas, especially the
Gatha Ahunavaiti, the one about the individual liberty in The Gathas of
Zarathustra. Maping Publishing. Ahmedabad. India. 1999. There is an
analogous proposal in the Bhagavad Ghita.
45
Also in the Book of the Zohar and other books of the Kabbalistic tradi-
tion.
42
human-divine identity, as the one discussed by Ibn Arabi,46 or

by the Persian poets. 47 These theological isomorphic tradi-
tions always belong to a mystical milieu and do not corre-
spond to autonomous political communities based on such
principles, but are developed as part of more or less esoteric
doctrines which act as complementary appendixes to the on-
totheological scenarios, and they never constitute the myths of
wider political communities. It is interesting to observe that in
these different theses of human-divine isomorphisms, the
theomorphosis of Mesopotamian and Egyptian traditions turns
into an anthropomorphosis of the divine, a fact which implies
an anthropization that is peculiar to archaic myth. In this
sense, mystical isomorphic myths work in opposite directions
to ontotheological ones, for they imply a fraternal anti-
hierarchical social structure contrary to urban social order. At
the opposite side, we have a fourth group of ontotheological
scenarios in which the relation is an auto-morphism of a di-
vine representation, that relegates the human to a shadow of
the world of the gods -as it is the case in Hinduism, in which
Vishnu dreams the universe-, or the different forms of fatal-
ism, where a universal meccano fulfils its plans in relation to
humans, divine beings and the world. However, the interme-
diate ontotheological narratives, those which apply the
morphism of infinitude, are the ones more widely accepted. In
them, the divine -whether a unique being or many-, enjoys a
preeminent ontological position, but the human is not simply
a dream, it maintains a relation with the divine –even though
46
See the Tratado de la unidad by Ibn ‘Arabi, Translated by Roberto Pla.
Ed. Sirio. Málaga.1987. (English Edition: Ibn ‘Arabi, Muhyiddin, Treatise
on Unity. Cheltenham (U.K.) Beshara Publications. 1980.) These declara-
tions were a source of many problems to those who supported them.
47
Attar, Hafiz, Nizami, Rumi (writes in Persian), Sanai, etc.
43
it may be one of subordination- by which it obtains entity.

This ontotheology occurs in the myths of Judaism, Christian-
ism, Islam, as well as in those of Greece and Rome, in Vedic
ones (except that of the Purusha) and in Brahmanism, in the
myths of the Nigerian region, in those of the Bushongo, the
Zulu, and a great number of African tales, as well as in the
better part of the myths from the American cultures.
When creation is the act of a divine being it is implement-
ed either by means of a more or less undifferentiated matter,
an apeiron, or through the word. The narratives of creation
through the word are a subsequent theological development of
those of creation by the use of undifferentiated matter, alt-
hough we find them combined. In the Egyptian myths of the
Memphis Triad, Ptah creates the world and the gods through
the word.48 In the creation myth of Hermopolis, the Waters
spoke to Infinitude, Nothingness, Nowhereness, and Dark-
ness, and so the world began.49 In Iranian mythology, Ahura
Mazda creates the universe with his thought, Vohu Mana or
Good Mind (the greatest of his Divine Powers50), introducing
with it movement in the static matter,51 like Yahweh performs
in the Genesis, or Hermes in the myths of the Hellenistic mys-
teries. These narratives are the result of priestly elaborations
in hierarchical societies with mythico-ritual structures corre-
48
As can be read in the Shabaka Stone of the British Museum (Number
4.98). Text in Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature: Voume I:
The Old and Middle Kingdoms. University of California Press. Berkeley,
Los Angeles, London. 1975. p.p.51-57.
49
See Robert A. Armour. Gods and Myths of Ancient Egypt. The American
University in Cairo Press. Cairo 1989.p.154.
50
Six abstract ideas (considered archangels) who intervene in the creaction
and activity of the world.
51
See the Leyend of Gaush Urva (The Creation Story) in The Gathas of
Zarathushtra. Mapin Publishing. Ahmedabad. India 1999. p.p.63-70.
44
sponding to the constructions of a universal city. In Hindu

myths, Om, the primordial word, or vibration of the universe
which is identified with Brahman, is the generator of the gods
and the worlds.52 In Mayan mythology, it is the word of Hura-
can what makes the Earth appear from darkness. 53 In the
Muisca myth, the god Chiminichagua creates two birds in
order to spread the light in which the world is formed: crea-
tion springs from their breath-light, a metaphor for the demi-
urgic word.54 In the Australian myths that narrate the dream-
time walkabout 55 -the wandering of the ancestors over the
Earth in which landscape and its creatures were created-, the
cosmogonic tool is not only the spoken word but their general
symbolic performative act. The ancestors mark the Earth and
interiorize it in rituals and narratives, creating the world in the
process. It is interesting to observe how one of the most ar-
chaic cosmogonies that have survived captured better than
any other the general processes of symbolization, including
markings and writings in their wider sense, as well as ritual
actions.
A cosmogonic ontotheological variant is given by the
merging of the categories of the divine and chaos. In these
cases, we see the principle of diffuse identity at work which
characterizes archaic mythological tales, for gods and chaos
52
See what it is said in the Mandukya Upanishad (1-12) and the Chandogya
Upanishad ( I. i.1-2, 5), in the cited edition of Sarvepalli Radakrishnan from
the Indian Philosophy.
53
In Popol Vuh. See the literal translation of Allen J. Christenson. Lines 21-
24. Mesoweb Publications. Web.
54
See the myth of Chiminichagua in Javier Ocampo López, Mitos y leyen-
das latinoamericanas. (Latin American Myths and Legends) Plaza y Janés.
Bogotá. 2006.
55
See the description of the Dreamtime in Mudrooroo Nyoongah, Aborigi-
nal Mythology. Thorsons. London. 1994.
45
are considered as variants of a common divine force. In these

myths, the gods of chaos simply represent more archaic divine
beings, or titans, while traditional gods are the usurpers, as
can be observed in religions of Indo-European origin (in the
narratives of the combats between Devas and Asuras 56 ) as
well as in the Sumer-Semitic religions of Phoenicia 57 and
Ugarit.58 Here chaos is merely relative, not a state of disorder
or primordial non-being from which the gods emerge, but it
marks the transition from an old order into a new one, be it
the transition from the order of Varuna to that of Indra, from
Chronos to Zeus, or from Apsu to that of Marduk. In this
sense, it is a variation of ontotheological scenarios which
narrate the creation of humans as a Theo-morphism, now
applied to the origin of the world. We find an archaic version
of this scenario in an African tale. According to Kono myth
(Guinea), before the world began there was only chaos, ex-
cept for the existence of Sa (the bringer of death), his wife
and his daughter.59 We have just been told in the narrative that
at the beginning there was only chaos and Sa’s family, when a
new character springs out of nowhere, the god Alatanga -a
kind of organizer demiurge, counterpart of Sa-, bringing to
56
In Hunduism, Zoroastrianism, Hittite or Greek religion. It is curious to
observe that the position between the gods of Good and Evil is inverted in
the case of Hinduism and Zoroastrianism: In Iran, the Vedic Asuras are the
gods of light.
57
See the Phoenician myths in The Theology of the Phoenicians by San-
choniatho. Sacred-texts.com. Web.
58
In the poem that tells the story of Baal and Anath, where the victory over
the chaotic dragon Lotan is narrated. See the Poem of Baal and Anath. In
The Ancient Near East. The Ancient Near East: A New Anthology of Texts
and Pictures. Vol.I Princeton University Press. Princeton, 1973.
59
See the myth of Sa and Alatangana: A Kono Story. In Essential African
Mythology. Thorsons- Harper Collins. Glasgow. 1997. p.p.2-6.
46
the rest of the creation story a totally anthropomorphic dy-

namic that chaos by itself could never have done. Creation
and chaos, a variation of the intuitive opposition between life
and death, appear inevitably intertwined not only in the more
archaic mythologies but also in urban ones. Among the myths
that build primordial chaotic scenarios, is found the Sumerian
of Nammu, a maternal goddess who represents the waters of
chaos, from which the sky, An, and the Earth, Ki will arise by
parthenogenesis. 60 This couple is in a sexual embrace, and
from their union other gods emerge, a narrative morphology
that is analogous to the Polynesian, with the additional intro-
duction of Nammu’s chaotic prelude. In Babylon, the primor-
dial ontology proposed in the Enuma Elish is a variant of the
Sumerian: out of the first undifferentiation Apsu and Tiamat
arise. These are primordial waters similar to those we encoun-
ter in many other mythological tales, like the Vedic Vrta, to
whom Indra defeats, 61 or the Caicai Vilu of the Mapuche,
serpent god of the waters to whom the serpent god of the earth
Tenten Vilu defeats,62 or like the Greek monster Typhon, to
whom Zeus overthrows, 63 or as the chaotic waters that the
legendary Chinese emperors Yao and Yu defeated. 64 In all
these representations, a first form is given to the unformed, to
60
Myth gathered in the tablets XVII and XVIII from the Nippur excavation.
Sacred-texts.com. Web.
61
As multiple hymns of the Rigveda gather.
62
See the Leyendas nativas argentinas de la Patagonia (Argentinian Native
Legends of the Patagonia), by Horacio Soldano. Editorial Dunken. Buenos
Aires.2006.
63
See Apollodorus, Biblioteca Mitológica. Alianza Editorial. Madrid. 1993.
(English Edition: Apollodorus The Library (2 Vol.) Trans. James G. Frazer.
Loeb Classical Library. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, MA. 1996.)
64
See the Historical Records, Chapter 2 of Ssu-Ma-Chien. Trans. Herbert J.
Allen. Sacred-texts.com.Web. See also in Ibid., The Books of Yü.
47
the non-thinkable and indefinite, to the apeiron, all those

things over which we cannot establish synthetic unities by
means of concepts. In fact, in the Babylonic instance, Apsu
and Tiamat are the first individuations, -vaguely anthropo-
morphic- since Tiamat was thought of as a woman and bisex-
ual at the same time, much in the manner of the Anatolian
Magna Mater, a diffuse human representation of something
even more chaotic that is its source. The names of the mon-
strous divine beings are the first determinations in an ocean of
undifferentiation, they constitute a first determination that the
human mind sketches upon the origins, instating two funda-
mental concepts, the apeiron, and the primordial forms of
divinity that Apsu and Tiamat gather. In the Egyptian myth of
Heliopolis,65 Ra gives birth to himself out of the chaotic wa-
ters, in a very interesting act of self-determination that vio-
lates our intuitions of space and time, because Ra is not the
result of chaos but of his own creative will, the force which
establishes a point one in the sequence of creation that is in-
dependent of point zero. In the narrative of the Ogdoad of
Hermopolis, four elements arise from chaos in the Isle of Fire,
and give shape to the world.66 At the same time, from them a
feminine counterpart arises. In the Phoenician myth, at the
beginning there was Chaos and Air, a couple from whom
Wind and Desire emerged and who engendered Mot, the god
65
Ra or Khepera creation myth appears in the papyrus 10,188 of the British
Museum. Sacred-texts.com. Web.
66
Robert A. Armour, informs us about a poem preserved in an old papyrus,
without specifying, in which the creation myth of Hermopolis is related.
Hermopolitan mythology is known from much posterior chronologically
documents. See the commentary of Armour in Gods and Myths of Ancient
Egypt. Ed.Cit.p.p.153-154.
48
of death.67 In Olympic mythology, accepted at this point by

the Romans, from Chaos emerged Gea and Eros, who in their
embrace would generate the Titans out of whom the gods
would be created.68 In Taoist mythology, out of the chaotic,
dark and maternal undifferentiated principle of Tao the One
emerges, and its subsequent numerical determinations after-
wards. 69 And something similar is narrated in the myths of
Tibetan Bon religion, in which the first luminous being
emerges from the void, and all the fundamental spiritual con-
cepts subsequently.70 In Shinto Japanese tales, Sky and Earth
arose from chaos, which were separated by five Kami (spir-
its), spontaneously formed to later disappear once they had
performed their titanic separation.71 In the Nahua myth of The
Five Suns, from the primordial chaos Ometecuhtli-
Omecihuatl appears, a bisexual couple called the Lords of
Duality.72 In the Hopi myth, humans arise from an underworld
67
See the Phoenician myths in The Theology of the Phoenicians by San-
choniatho. Ed. Cit.
68
As Hesiod, Apollodorus and other authors tell us. See Theogony. Trans-
lated by Hugh G. Evelyn-Whyte. Harvard University Press and William
Heinemann. Cambridge (Mass.) and London. 1982. Or in the The Library
of Apollodorus. Ed. Cit.
69
See the translation by Wing Tsit Chan of the Tao-Te Ching in A Source
Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton Univeristy Press. Princeton (N.J.).
1973. p.p. 139-176.
70
See the essay of Michael Walter in The Journal of the Tibetan Society,
where he publishes some tantras which belong to the Collected Tantras of
Bon, previously published in Ed. Dolanji. India. 1972. The concept of emp-
tiness linked to that of internal reality is found in chapters 3 and 4. See
himalayasocanth.cam.ac.uk. Web.
71
As we read at the beginning of the Kojiki. See the translation by Bill Hall
Chamberlain in Sacred-texts.com. Web.
72
Miguel León-Portilla offers a relation of the sources of this myth in
codices and monuments. See La filosofía náhuatl estudiada en sus fuentes
49
with chaotic characteristics, prior to memory, from which

they will move on to an already stratified society of three
castes from which they will take their communal identity.73 In
the creation myth of the Tiwi islands of Australia (at Darwin),
the ancestors sprang from chaos to later exist in a state of
creative dream (palaneri) from which all things emerged.74
As a subsequent theological variant of the divinity-chaos
double principle, we find scenarios that propose their union
into a single pole. In the Genesis, what is called the Spirit of
God is the active force that lies upon the waters of chaos.
During Medieval Kabbalistic tradition, chaos, thought as
emptiness, was considered as part of the divine being, with
whom it formed a superesse, 75 i.e., an entity is suggested
which is at the same time inside and outside the universe, and
which engulfs being and non-being, a concept that had al-
ready been developed within Hinduism through the Para-
Brahman without attributes of the Upanishads, and later by
Sankaracharia, where it is envisioned a type of being that is
completely out of the manifestation of existence, analogous to
the Buddhist void, and similar to the representations that other
traditions have done of chaos or apeiron.76 Something equiva-
(The Náhuatl Philosophy Studied in its Sources). U.N.A.M. México.1966.

100n-101n.
73
See the compilation and edition of the creation myth that Mary Russell F.
Colton did in 1936, gathered in Sacred-texts.com. Web.
74
Gathered into a narrative of Maryanne Mungatopi of 1998, in
Aboriginalartonline. Web. Mudrooroo Nyoongah in his book Aboriginal
Mythology expands the tales also to the greater part of Australian
communities, as part of the Dream Time myths.
75
As Cabalists Azriel and Jacob ben Shesheth affirm. See Gershom Scho-
lem, Origins of Kabbalah. Trans. R.J. Zwi Werblosky. Princeton University
Press. Princeton. N.J. 1990.
76
See the analysis of Sankara about the difference between Saguna Brah-
man, or the Divinity with attributes and the Nirguna Brahman, the Absolute
50
lent can be found in classical Taoism, and afterwards, over-

stated in the Chinese Neo-Taoism from the Wei-Chin period77
(220-440 A.Z.), or through the synchretism of Tibetan Bud-
dhism and Bon religion, where emptiness is the potentiality
between being and non-being (understanding non-being as the
world, and being as consciousness). Whereas in Vedanta,
Para-Brahman will be a kind of subtle substrate, a canvas or
screen in which the action of the divine consciousness and the
world takes place, Taoism will simply assign a genetic prima-
cy to non-being in relation to being.
In order to implement chaotic ontotheologies, different
scenarios have been constructed which correspond to distinct
primordial apeironian substances. Mud or clay is a common
one, i.e., earth as a simple and intuitive particularization of the
general concept of matter. In the same way as water, fire, or
air, which are regarded as chaos in different mythological
traditions, clay does not have a regular and geometrical form,
but obtains it from the receptacle in which it is contained.
Within epistemological frameworks in which matter is con-
sidered a mystery, clay seems to differ from the other ele-
ments. It appears to be a substrate closer to life, since plants
can grow in it, and when living beings rot and decay, is not by
burning, or turning into water that they do so, but through a
decomposition which resembles that of the earth. This allows
more intuitive representations of the creation and destruction
process. Creation tales with clay-chaos as substrate are found
without attributes. In Brahma Sutras. Ed. Swami Vireswarananda. Advainta

Ashrama. Kolkata. 2001.
77
After the fall of the Han dynasty, in a period of constant warfare, floods,
and droughts which favored nihilist philosophies. See Neotaoism in Wing-
Tsit, Chan, Editor. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton Univer-
isty Press. Princeton (N.J.). 1973. p.p. 314-335.
51
in the biblical Genesis, and in the Native American,78 Finn-

Ugrian, Slavic, 79 and Turk-Mongol 80 mythologies. In these
last three traditions, the pattern is that of a cosmogonic dive
into chaotic waters by an ancestral character who retrieves
from its depths the clay with which all things will be created.
It follows a pattern that we can find in Hindu myths as well,
one example being the immersion of Brahma in the form of a
wild boar to make the earth emerge from the bottom of the
waters.81 In Turk-Mongol myths, the Sky god makes the re-
quest to the primordial human, other times to the animal to-
tem, to dive and bring him clay for the creation of the sky, to
which this figure complies, however, during the immersion it
keeps a piece inside its mouth. The celestial god forces this
being to spit it out, and so, Evil and the Bad Lands arise.82
Clay is the substrate of the potter, an allegory that allows a
simple and intuitive understanding of the shift from the shape-
less into that which has form. In the Egyptian myths of The-
ban tradition, Khnum, using clay, creates the humans with his
potter’s wheel.83 In Olympian tradition, humans are spontane-
ously born out of Gea, the earth. In Choctaw myths, the Great
Spirit Nanapesa, takes Nanih Waiyah, the primordial mound,
78
An account of the myth in these oral traditions is found at Na-
tiveslanguages.org. Web.
79
A translation into English of the Slavic myth, Songs of the Bird Gama-
yun, can be found at Russophilia.wordpress.com. Web.
80
Concerning the myths of the Yukaghir see Arctic-megapedia.ru. Web.
81
In the Brahmana Puranas. I.i.5. 1-9. Archive.org. Web.
82
See the comments and references of Mircea Eliade about the topic for the
myths of the Finno-Ugric and Turk-Mongols, in A History of Religious
Ideas. #244. Vol. Ed. Cit. p.p. 8-11.
83
As tells the myth in the columns and walls of the Esna (Egypt) temple
dedicated to Khnum-Ra. See Jochen Hallof. Esna. UCLA Department of
Egyptology. Department of Near Eastern Languages. And Cultures. U.C.
Los Angeles. p.6. Web.
52
as matter to create the first ancestors, who become Choctaw

after crawling out of a cave. 84 In the Guarani tales, Tupa cre-
ates humanity infusing life into little statues of clay. 85 The
Yoruban Obatala creates the human body with clay and
Olodumare infuses spirit into it, so that afterwards Oduduwa
may be able to create Ife with clay.86
As a biological variation of the undifferentiated matter, we
have the primordial scenarios of the cosmic egg, the cave, and
the semen. These scenarios will incorporate elements of a
divine creation together with the inscrutability of an action
which, linked to sex, is incomprehensible or chaotic. The
image of an egg as primordial substance can be found in the
Egyptian tale of the Ogdoad of Hemopolis, in which eight
divine principles are united to form an invisible egg from
which sun light will rise.87 In Phoenician mythology, the god
Mot has the form of a primordial egg from which Sky and
Earth will emerge.88 In Dogon mythology (Mali), after per-
forming the first creation of the acacia, the god Amma creates
the universe out of a primordial egg, in which the eight crea-
tive primeval movements will take place.89 In Orphic mythol-
84
As orally tell the Choctaw who still live in Mississippi. Gathered in sev-
eral internet pages where different Native American groups maintain their
traditions. See for instance, Indianlegend. com. Web.
85
As Narciso Colman told in his poem in Guarani, Nuestros antepasados
(Our Ancestors) (1937), republished by Editorial El Lector, Asunción Para-
guay. 2009. Web.
86
See the myth of Obatalá in the work of Ngangar Mbitu and Ranchor
Prime, Essential African Mythology. Thorsons. San Francisco. 1997.
87
See the reference in footnote 65.
88
As Sanchoniatho affirms in The Theology of the Phoenicians. Sacred-
texts.com. Web.
89
Cf. Walter E. A. van Beek et al. Dogon Restudied: A Field Evaluation of
the Work of Marcel Griaule [and Comments and Replies] p.140. Current
53
ogy, Chronos creates a silver cosmic egg from which Phanes

Dionysus or Protogonos is born, who will create the sky, the
earth, the sun, the stars and the habitat of the gods.90 Subse-
quently, in a new foundational act, Zeus will eat the egg thus
giving birth to a new era. The Chinese Pan Gu, as we have
already said, also springs out from an egg, and in Tibetan Bon
religion, its primordial giant, the goddess Chucham Cyalmo,
Queen of the Waters, will have the same origin, 91 while in
Vietnamese myths, it will be the world what will be born out
if this substrate.92 In Vedic tradition, Hiranyagharba (the egg
of the Divinity) floats in the beginning over the primordial
waters.93 In the Finnish myths of the Kalevala, over the gigan-
tic body of the goddess Ilmatar, who symbolizes the primor-
dial waters, the eggs of gold and iron that originate the world
Anthropology. Vol. 32. Number 2. April, 1991. The University of Chicago

Press. Web.
90
The myth is gathered in the Orphicorum Fragmenta, composed by frag-
ments which are found in different authors, Proclus, Aristocritus the Mani-
chean, et al. See the translations and references which gives W.K.C. Guth-
rie, as well as the study of the different creation myth versions in Orpheus
and the Greek Religion (Princeton University Press. Princeton. 1993. p.p.
81 y s.s.).
91
There is a translation of the text into English by Dan Martin in Mandala
Cosmogony: Human Body Good Thought and the Revelation of the Secret
Mother Tantras of Bon. Harrassowitz Verlag. Wiesbaden. 1994. p.23.
92
The oral myth of the Dragon and the Fairy who lays 100 eggs, was writ-
ten for the first time in the 15th Century. English translation by Nguyen
Ngoc Binh Vietnam: Essays on History, Culture, and Society. Article for
the Asian Society. p.p. 61-77. 1985. Web.
93
See the Rigveda. Hymn 121 of the Mandala 10. The subject also appears
in the Chandogya Upanishad (III.XIX. 1-4) See the edition of Sarvepalli
Radhakrishnan and Charles A. Moore, Eds. In A Sourcebook in Indian
Philosophy. Ed.Cit.
54
are incubated.94 And in the Estonian mythological tradition it

will be the Solar Bird the one that will put the three eggs from
which the astronomic bodies will emerge.95
In some cases, the egg’s reproductive image can be trans-
formed into that of a womb, which being of a divinity repre-
senting the earth it will correspond to a cave. In Quechua
myth, the cave is called Pacari, or the House of Dawn. Within
it, the divinized primordial ancestors were generated, the four
brothers: Pachacamac, Ciracocha, Manco Capac and the Un-
named.96 This cosmogony is also a variation of the ones that
relate the generation of humans out of stones. In fact, in one
of the variants of the Quechua foundational myth, Viracocha,
near the Titicaca Lake, creates the human being by infusing
his creative spirit into some rocks. In the Nahua myth of
Chicomoztoc (The Seven Caves), human beings emerge in a
paradisiac cave, considered as their true abode, to which they
will return at the end of time.97
94
See Elias Lönnrot. Kalevala. Chant I. Alianza Editorial. Madrid. 2010.
p.p. 52-58. (English Edition: Lönnrot, Elias, The Kalevala. Trans. Keith
Bosley. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford University Press. Oxford. 2009.)
95
See the poem of the myth translated by Ülo Valk in Ex Ovo Omnia:
Where Does the Balto-Finnic Cosmogony Originate? The Etiology of an
Etiology. Oral Tradition, 15/1 (2000). p.p. 145-158. Web.
96
The myth of the Ayar brothers appears in the Comentarios Reales of the
Inca Garcilaso (Book III.25) (See the edition of Comentarios Reales.
Editorial Porrúa. México. 1990. [English Edition: Garcilaso de la Vega, The
Inca, The Royal Comentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru.
Trans. Harold V. Livermore. Hackett Pub Co Inc. Indianapolis. 2006.]) as
well as in oral tradition, in pottery and architecture.
97
The myth appears in the Manuscrito de Tovar (1585), Where we find an
illustrated history of the Aztecs. See an archeological analysis of the Mexi-
can symbolism of caves in Doris Heyden, From Teotihuacan to Tenoch-
titlan. In Messoamerica´s Classical Heritage. Editors: David Carrasco,
Lindsay Jones, Scott Sessions. Ed. Cit. p.p. 174.
55
The creation by the action of vital fluids, semen, blood or

saliva, completes the simple and intuitive epistemological
framework of the chaotic-sexual scenarios of the beginnings.
In the Egyptian Ennead of Heliopolis, Ra’s absolute self-
determination (by which he gives birth to himself from cha-
os), if taken to its logical consequences, implies that if we
want to maintain the sexual imagery, the beings following Ra
will have to come out from his masturbation. 98 In Hurrian
mythology the god Kumarbi fecundates a rock, and Ul-
likummi,99 an anthropomorphic being made of stone, is born.
Aphrodite is born from the sperm of Uranus that falls to the
sea after his castration.100 In one of the Phrygian myths about
Cybele, the goddess is the result of the castration of the her-
maphrodite monster Agdistis, who was born from the contact
with the semen of Zeus over a rock. A variant of the creation
from the seminal substance can be found in tales of creation
by blood, in some myths common to Indonesia and Southwest
Polynesia, which are similar to the ones found in narratives of
the New Britain’s Melanesians, where The First who Was
There (the mythic ancestor) creates two men by drawing them
with his blood.101 At other times, the vital fluid can be saliva,
as in the myth of Popol Vuh in which the severed head of
Hunhun-Apu spits the princess Xquiq of Xibalba (the Mayan
98
See Robert A. Armour. Gods and Myths of Ancient Egypt. Ed. Cit.p.p.15-
30.
99
The Song of Ulikummi, has been preserved in fragments in different
tablets. There is a translation of them made by Hans Gustav Guterbok: The
Song of Ullikummi Revised Text of the Hittite Version of a Hurrian Myth.
Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol. 5, No. 4 (1951), p.p. 135-161. The
American Schools of Oriental Research. Web.
100
As Hesiod tells in the Theogony.
101
Cf. Roland B. Dixon, Oceanic Mythology (1916). Part II. Chapter 1.
Sacred-texts.com. Web.
56
underworld), who becomes pregnant with the twins Hunapu

and Xbalanque.102
These diverse ontological scenarios show in the first place,
that out of the four pointed out categories, those of physis and
chaos are subordinated to the other two. In fact, we could
reduce these scenarios to the relations of the human-divine
axis, since in traditional mythologies we do not find scenarios
where humans and gods have originated out of a non-
divinized nature. The ontologies of these tales oscillate from
spiritual materialisms to spiritualisms that negate life and
matter, but in none of the cases we find a physis which is ob-
jectified and severed from gods as well as men. Nature is a
Thou, in a Buberian sense,103 and not an It -something differ-
ent to the human being and alien to his experience- and this
happens even in the most theologized mythologies. Mytholog-
ical ontology tends to transform everything into a Thou with
which to establish a profound emotional relationship. We will
have to wait until the Pre-Socratic philosophers to see the first
myths in which nature has already become an It, an object that
can be manipulated for other purposes. We could order the
aforementioned narratives, following the human-divine axis
criterion, from the point of view of the specific relation that
each of these two categories has with the rest of the universal
scenario.104 Consequently, anthropomorphic scenarios will be
pan-anthropic or mero-anthropic depending on whether the
102
See Popol Vuh. Ed. Cit. lines 2300-2360.
103
The relation I-Thou as the basis for the religious experience was treated
for the first time by Ludwig Feuerbach in Principles of the Philosophy of
the Future. #59-61. Hackett Publishing Company. Indianapolis. Indiana.
1986. And extended later by Martin Bubber. I and Thou. Trans. Walter
Kaufmann. Charles Scribner's Sons. New York 1970.
104
See Appendix A.
57
human principle is a whole or a part of creation, while in on-

totheological scenarios the relationship will be rather of hier-
archy among the categories instead of the extensionality intui-
tion operating in the conceptualization of parts, and so we will
be having monist or pluralist scenarios. The theological hier-
archy related to creation is conveyed by three possible mor-
phisms: that of infinitude, the auto-morphism and the isomor-
phism, being the third one a variation of anthropomorphic
principles. But despite that we can establish more or less in-
telligible relations, the problem remaining is that the objects
among which such relations are defined, are operating as
primitive categories, and the fact that all mythological tales
may be reduced to these two (human-divine), and that differ-
ent cultures have operated with them in different degrees of
subordination, shows that they could be reduced or subordi-
nated to one another without any problem to practical life,
which proves that to choose one of them as a primitive in
relation to the other is arbitrary, and that any analysis that
may adopt only supernatural categories as referent will turn
its back on the anthropological evidence of myths.
On the other hand, it calls our attention the biological con-
tent of these narrative scenarios about the origins, which em-
phasizes the natural constituent of their pretended supernatu-
rality, and the need to widen the treatment of myths with psy-
chobiology. In the case of myths that are anthropomorphic,
androgynous or of the primordial couple’s union, it can be
observed that these explanations about the actions of the uni-
verse consider a giant human body that is self-fecundated and
self-generated, or that it is dismembered into two or more
pieces, or that it is already in a process of sexual fecundation,
images which are taken from the most basic animal experi-
ence. Ontotheological mythologies show an analogous biolog-
58
ical content. Gods originate amongst themselves as well as

animals and humans, and maintain family links between each
other which are openly human. Even in such cases in which
the myth of creation is based on the word, as the one of Ptah,
this word is conceived as a variant of the semen, 105 which
later will be called logos spermatikos by the Stoics, the ra-
tional seed dispersed throughout the universe which is the
cause of the generation and change of things, a concept anal-
ogous to the Hindu Om that lightens the universal womb or
Prakriti.106 The world of the gods marks the limits of human
knowledge, it is the hypostasis of our ignorance, to which we
assign a form of order, an intelligence, whose vital efficiency
is unquestionable in all domains of experience. The biological
sacralization prompted by these two poles, with the tension
that occurs between them in the different mythologies, has
provided a simple representation with which to think the cos-
mos and on which to build an identity. Insofar as these ontol-
ogies have been the ground for groups’ identities, that is, they
have been primitive determinations, their elements have not
needed justification, on the contrary, they were the justifica-
tion for the rest of things: the gods, the kings, and the city
founded any aspect of the group’s life or that of the individu-
al. To traditional myths, humans, gods and nature are final
105
Recall that in the Heliopolis creation myth, Aton creates the Enead of the
gods through a masturbation inspired by the words of Ptah. (See Robert A.
Armour. Gods and Myths of Ancient Egypt. Ed. Cit. p.123)
106
See chapter seven of the Bhagavad Ghita: The Supreme Being and the
World. (Brahman and Prakriti). In Indian Philosophy. Ed. Cit. p.p.126-134.
The Ghita synchretizes into this doctrine the most ancient ones of the
Samkya concerning Prakriti and Purusha (Physis and Subject), and that of
the Upanishads of the identity of the individual being and the universal,
Atman is Brahman, and Brahman is Om, a self-existent mental-seminal
form.
59
and unmovable concepts, substances which do not require an

ulterior clarification, principles over which the cosmic drama
is settled, regardless of who amongst them are the main ac-
tors. The same occurs in the case of chaos, void, or apeiron,
whether conceived as a negation or as a first determination
from which the gods or the anthropomorphic principle will
emerge. Whether in its ontotheological variant or in the onto-
anthropomorphic one, this approach demands an essentialist
ontological compromise: myths tell a story whose content is
truthful, relate actions that occurred at a primordial time and
were featured by divine beings.107 Nonetheless, the analysis of
their ontologies shows that such a compromise is superfluous,
for in cosmogonies (and in mythic narratives in general) we
can find operating very clear biological representations from
which a human-divine axis has been constructed, equipped
with hypostatized linguistic properties.
The human-divine conceptual axis only makes sense tak-
ing the human as referent and separating the representation of
the physis from that of the gods. It is therefore not a question
of an I-thou, I-it double dichotomy in relation to the gods and
the world, as Feuerbach and Buber posed, for this I, as Kanti-
an epistemology has shown, and psychoanalysis later, as also
did Buddhist and Vedanta psychologies, is not an stable and
univocally determined identity but a mimetic process of narra-
tive of the community with its environment, as we shall see.
Myth as a human construction is an inevitable corollary of
naturalist ontologies, from the ones devised by Atomists, Epi-
cureans and Confucians in Antiquity, to those developed by
sociology, economy, and anthropology from the 20th Century
107
Cf. Eliade. Mito y Realidad. Ed. Labor. Barcelona. 1992. p. 12. (English
Edition: Eliade, Mircea, Myth and Reality. Waveland Press Inc. Illinois.
1998.)
60
onwards. In the modern world, the sociological science devel-

oped by August Comte from the ideas of Hobbes, Condorcet
and Montesquieu makes a reinterpretation of myths as prima-
ry stages of humanity’s intellectual development, which is
equivalent to declare them necessary errors of an infancy
which shows an spontaneous predilection for insoluble prob-
lems. 108 Subsequent positivisms, like the logical one,109 will
transform the qualification of insoluble into that of nonsense,
relegating myths to a merely expressive function, like lyric or
music. The predominant tone of these theories is that of the
Euhemerism: the ascertainment of similarities between the
world of the gods and that of men, and the postulation that
such a mimesis has the human as model, being the world of
myth a projection. Euhemerist theses can be found in the
work of Tylor,110 or that of James Frazer, for whom magic,
religion and science are nothing but diverse forms of mental
structures, or theories, which are useful to explain the uni-
verse’s phantasmagoria.111 We also find them in subsequent
cultural materialist theses which developed from dialectical
materialism. From other more critical psycho-sociological
108
From this point of view human development consists of three stages,
theological, metaphysical and positive. The first one is subdivided into
fetishism, polytheism, and monotheism. See Comte’s comments to the
theological or fictitious estate in Discurso sobre el espíritu positivo. Trans.
Consuelo Berges. Sarpe. Madrid.1984. p.p.27-28. (English Edition: Comte,
Auguste, A General View on Positivism. Cambridge University Press.
2009.)
109
See Rudolf Carnap, The Rejection of Metaphysics, in Morris Weitz,
Editor. Twentieth Century Philosophy: The Analitic Tradition. The Free
Press. New York. 1966.
110
See Edward B. Tylor. Primitive Culture. Harper Torch Books. New
York. 1958. p.334.
111
Cf. Sir James Frazer. The Golden Bough. Collier Books. New York.
1963. p.p. 825-826.
61
viewpoints, like that of Nietzsche, the myths of great religions

are the result of a nihilist valuation made by a particular man
type, the homo religiosus, whose personal psychological
wants are projected over the word view he suggests, though
myth’s phantasmagoria is of the same Apollonian species as
that of science, since any kind of knowledge of reality implies
its representational construction. 112 From these perspectives,
the psychological experience of the numinous that is in das
Heilige is not negated, the experience of a radical other, but it
is ascribed to social causes, as equally occurs in the case of
Emile Durkheim to whom the invention of mythological cate-
gories obeys the purpose of explaining the invisible force,
although plainly sensible, of the group’s consciousness. The
world represented by human societies expresses the complete
system of values and knowledge, and such system is no other
than the abstract form of the concept of society that a specific
group handles.113 Myths, within Durkheim’s theses, would be
proto-scientific forms 114 of expressing the concepts which
make up the consciousness of a human collective. The socio-
logical proposal studies myths from their social functionality,
and not only from the general human point of view, but from
the communicative action which establishes the unity of so-
cial groups. Within this tendency we find Habermas’ thought,
to whom myth, as for some of the thinkers of structuralist
112
Although these Nietzschean ideas are found along almost his the entire
work, see as an example the Critique of the Highest Values Hitherto. In The
Will to Power. Vintage Books. New York 1968.p.85 and s.q.
113
See the Conclusión (IV) of Las formas elementales de la vida religiosa
(The Elementary Forms of Religious Life). Ed. Cit.
114
I understand proto-scientific as a knowledge previous to modern science,
a symbolically primary kind of knowing.
62
anthropology, 115 is Lebenswelt.116 Therefore, we can charac-

terize myths from certain epistemological structures based on
homology and heterogeneity, whose categorical distinction
between animate and inanimate is fuzzy, and which con-
founds between teleological action and communicative action,
between the natural world and the social world.117 Habermas’
theses are inscribed within a general theory of rationality
which is based on Max Weber’s concept of the universal pro-
cess of disenchantment which takes place in the history of the
great religions, out of which the structure of the modern hu-
man consciousness emerges. Habermas’s postulate could be
seen as a reformulation of the Feuerbach-Buber thesis of the
objectification of nature in modern societies, a distinction
which entails a progressive complexification of human sym-
bolic construction, but not necessarily that the social cut of
the communicative modern action is devoid of natural con-
tent. From this point of view, myths express archaic forms of
rationality within the human process of rationality’s progres-
sive development, a notion which implies a major transfor-
mation of the old theses which accused myths of being a mere
error, a product of irrationality.
115
In particular he follows the directives of Lévi-Strauss and M. Godelier.
See Jürgen Habermas. Teoría de la acción comunicativa. Trad. Manuel
Jiménez Redondo. Editorial Trotta. Madrid. 2010. p. 74. (English Edition:
Habermas, Jürgen, The Theory of Communicative Action. 2 Volumes.
Trans. Thomas McCarthy. Beacon Press. Boston, MA. 1985.)
116
Husserl’s expression: world of life. See The Crisis of European Sciences
and Transcendental Phenomenology. Trans. David Carr. Northwestern
University Press. Evanston (Illinois). 1970. I will deal with it in depth in
Part III of the book (Chapter 2.3). For now, it will suffice to know, that it is
the knowledge which the individuals of a community share in an unprob-
lematic manner, it is the world of what we take for granted, not yet thema-
tized for the thought.
117
Habermas. Op. Cit. p.p. 74-79.
63
In the last six or seven decades we have completed the pic-

ture of all mythologies which, even though for the religious
person do not represent more than the profane commentaries
of philosophy that do not say anything about the transcenden-
tal content, it shows a perfectly theorizable and comprehensi-
ble conceptual image, with a finite number of elements and
relations of diverse complexity, putting an end to many mysti-
fications which spontaneously had sprang from ignorance.
The set of human mythologies relativizes each one of them
separately by showing as common, ideas that were considered
unique, by generalizing, comparing and exposing to the light
of the intellect all those things that lived in the atmosphere of
the mysteries, of the sanctuary’s aura. The supposed secret
knowledge has been unveiled, and there philosophy has found
a thinking humanity (and an automatic one, for that matter)
catalogues of errors and some achievements, the greatest of
them, without any doubt, the fact of our survival, obtained,
nevertheless, at a very high price of violence and savagery.
On the other hand, the similarities between rites, myths and
gods, their characteristic sphere, and the ubiquity of the reli-
gious phenomenon, have suggested to ontotheological doc-
trines the possibility of a universal religion from which all
human religions would be just badly finished versions. This
inevitable transcendentalist 118 new outbreak was the thesis
developed by a great number of authors integrated in the so
called Eranos Group, which was influential in the academic
world after WWII. 119 The proposal is not strictly Neo-
118
Inevitable, due to the fact that the general ideological practice of human-
ity is still being ontotheological.
119
Carl Jung, Mircea Eliade, Heinrich Zimmer, Karl Kerenyi, Martin Bu-
ber, Dasetz Suzuki, Walter Wili, Ernst Benz, Henry Corbin, Joseph Camp-
64
Platonist because it talks about a progressive historical un-

folding of a supreme being in human consciousness, a God of
gods that has appeared in a theogony which follows necessary
laws, and so, we could characterize it as a historicist idealism
of Shellingian and Hegelian character. The notion of a com-
mon theme and its variations implies a joint composition of all
the transcendental myths, an articulation of a wide narrative
set according to a plan which, obviously, no one knew sepa-
rately, since people and cultures have historically acted ac-
cording to a particular problematic which they have encoun-
tered along their vital curse. Such a composition entails many
ontoepistemological difficulties which in turn entail serious
ethical problems. For instance, the thesis implies that there are
no false gods, and false religions either, but that the different
mythological stages have been necessary configurations that
have led, in accordance to a perfectly organized unfoldment,
to the idea of a transcendental paradigm. However, this is not
exactly what most religious books state in their pages, nor
what can be inferred from the words of Prophets and Saints,
neither how political powers have enacted in countless reli-
gious wars, a fact which entails that our human past is some
sort of charade, a bad prank built upon our ignorance which
has cost so much suffering and death. Besides its Hegelian
ascendancy, these two aspects of the Eranos thesis follow the
doctrine presented by Schelling in his Philosophy of Mytholo-
gy, where he maintains that mythological ideas are neither
invented nor willingly accepted by people and individuals,
since they are mere instruments of a theogonic process which
they do not perceive as a whole, and to which they serve
bell, Erich Neumann, and the long list of authors that compose the so called
Eranos Group.
65
without understanding it,120 a rather unsettling proposal (not

to mention its improbability and unprovability) which goes
against the more basic humanist views.
Mythological theories which start out from supernatural
beings (irrationalist or rationalist)121 are not only full of epis-
temological contradictions, but they relegate the human being
to the role of a cosmic puppet in the hands of who knows
what and with what purposes. Such a cruel and manipulative
cosmos would be a badly made theological nightmare which
would go against the very same idea of an intelligent Supreme
Being. These antinomic transcendental ideas are based upon
revelations which are sanctioned by human force, that is, their
acceptance rests ultimately on an act of faith, socially im-
posed, in relation to ontotheological postulates. Curiously, it
is by being based upon authority’s force that such ideas be-
come intelligible as regulative principles of a community and
reach some meaning. Only as determiners of social relations
can the transcendental ideas form a part of the Lebenswelt;
and only in relation to that uncritical world -although struc-
tured around economic actions- we can understand the numi-
nous character (the strangeness and ignorance in relation to
itself) which social life has, always immersed in the uncer-
tainties of its continuity.
The similarity of mythical themes, the so called mythol-
ogems, and the ubiquity of a characteristic domain of religious
120
Cf. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. Philosophy of Mythology. XI.
Cited in Ernst Benz, Theogony and the Transformation of Man in Friedrich
Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. p.p. 217. Man and Transformation. Papers from
the Eranos Year Books. Princeton University Press. Princeton (N.J.). 1980.
121
We could add mixed theories as the ones suggested by Otto, which have
served as basis for the Jungian psychoanalytic practice and for the mytho-
logical ideas of the Eranos Group.
66
experience, does not admit solely an essentialist explanation

of a Platonic-Schellingian character, but in fact a simpler ex-
planation can be given to it. The common patterns of all the
different mythologies, be it those of trees and/or sacred moun-
tains which unite supposed levels of existence, the travels to
the underworld in search for immortality, the divine birth of
heroes who destroy the monsters that threaten the community,
do not entail the existence of archetypical structures which are
actualized by the different mythologies. Mythological arche-
types can have a much more biological and local origin. They
are necessary forms of our perception and mental processing,
and have to do with our own structure as cellular beings and
not with timeless structures forged by a non-human mind. The
similarities among mythologies are due to the fact that in any
place in the world, biological human actions are the same, and
the maintenance of life in any community requires similar
actions, although the ways in which these are performed may
differ. Such variations are not of an essential theme, but of a
vital theme not prefigured anywhere which can be found in a
continuous change through the actions that the animal and
vegetal life has performed since before our emergence as
species.
On the other hand, an exclusive ontological approach does
not supply a clear economical explanation of myths, nor of
the life of the society in which it occurs, a want sufficient to
justify the rejection of explanations based upon these princi-
ples. To coordinate the causal explicative economical chains
with the ontotheological or ontoanthropologically religious
ones is difficult. The scenarios where a conjoined explanation
can be coordinated are those of the fundamental functional or
economic determination, as the case of Maui, Prometheus and
similar gods (myths which speak about civilizing ancestors),
67
that is, when the terrestrial economic action is not a mere

manifestation of an extramundane principle or simply of the
capricious and incomprehensible will of a god who improves
or worsens our way of life. Therefore, when Maui, the Poly-
nesian god, invents the fishhook, the explanation is plain and
clear. The myth provides an origin for the economic activity,
determining it in a precise manner within the community’s
actions, and extending the cunning of the hero to all fisher-
men. The ordinary activity of fishing is reaffirmed by the
story, as well as Maui, the ancestor, who is divine because of
the intelligence he showed in his action, a divinity which is
inherited by everyone who throws the fishhook. And some-
thing similar occurs with all civilizing god-heroes. However,
when the economic principle is extramundane, as when the
people of Israel receive the manna in the desert, or when
Krishna explains to Arjun in the Ghita that the war in which
he does not want to enter is nothing more than a repetitive and
empty imitation of extra-human principles, the explicative
result is incoherent with the community’s economic life.
Our humanity is only understandable when integrated into
the phenomenon of life, and this phenomenon is our final
referent. According to current estimates –the myths that mod-
ern science has elaborated-, the biopoiesis is a process which
started around 3900-3500 million years ago, within specific
planetary circumstances, and which is explained from the
scientific tales of evolution, biological theory, and the rest of
sciences that proceed through logical inferences from empiri-
cal data. By that I do not mean that this is the final and defini-
tive epistemological approach (such a concept does not make
any sense) to the phenomenon of life and the human being,
although I do sustain that this method is the actual result of a
rational and intellective refinement which was initiated before
68
our own species, and it is valid as such as long as it may be

critically used, relativizing universal concepts and giving
them a human content. The search for a neutral system of
formulae devoid of the weight of historical languages, as pro-
posed by logical positivism a hundred years ago, has been
understood as a chimera which does not even correspond to
the way in which science proceeds. Quine’s ontological rela-
tivism, Kuhn’s theory of scientific paradigms, the social criti-
cism of the Frankfurt School, and the diverse paradigms of
social science that arose from the post-structuralist proposals,
undermined the long time entertained pretensions by science
and Western philosophy for the creation of a total system of
concepts from which to tackle human experience. Neverthe-
less, it does not seem reasonable to renounce to a general
thinking which, taking the path already travelled up until now
as a constructive basis, may criticize the possibilities of such a
system with the tools of a science that does not come from the
gods. If something is shown by the social action derived from
the world’s mythologies is the uncritical conditioning that
ideologies have exercised and exercise in a tyrannical manner
over our ways of life, the inertia and superstitiously accumu-
lated human errors (no transcendental pranks), all of them
hand in hand with the principles that produce effective order
and vital prosperity.
The meaning of human life was not given ab initio, as it
proves the fact that we have transformed our ideas in this
regard and have been capable of living by them. The evolu-
tionary tension of our intelligence becomes tangible through
the changes that have taken place in the mythological deter-
minations. It is not the same determination the one which
sustains that the human being was created by the arrogant
Babylonian gods, as a slave in their service, than the one
69
which allows the development of the Athenian free citizen,

who controls his own political environment, and who, at least
as a project, tries to achieve excellence in any activity that is
entirely human. It is not the same idea that which presents the
human being as a miserable worm and sinner, who is judged
and condemned by an angry god merely because he possesses
a nature that, for starters, was created by the same judge who
condemns him, than the idea which was captured, after much
effort, in the Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, with all
its limitations. Additionally, the concepts of god, nature, and
chaos, are very different from those of 500 years ago, and
those from the ones of 4000 years ago. If we aspire to under-
stand myths, we will have to understand the social structures
in which they are integrated, the ones that they sustain and
from which they receive their particular forms, and this can-
not be done without first defining certain psychological basis.
70
CHAPTER 2
Language and Myth
2.1 Language Origin and Mythology
Temporarily I will adopt Durkheim and Habermas’ theses

which define myth from its communicative functionality as
foundational narratives of social identity. Myths are commu-
nicative human actions, and their understanding entails the
elucidation of human language functionality, a clarification
that also addresses other related matters. From an anthropo-
logical perspective, the problematic of language origin re-
quires a psychobiological approach which includes an analy-
sis of the animal communication process and not merely a
metaphysical discussion, whether it may be undertaken from
71
CHAPTER 2: Language and Myth
the claims of some ontotheology or from the rational psychol-

ogy122 that philosophy has employed up to the 20th Century.
Nevertheless I consider relevant to make a draft, although a
rapid one, of the main theses that have been thought of con-
cerning the relationship between myth and language, for it
will help to better outline the subsequent psycholinguistic
theory, besides showing us the theoretical conditionings from
which the science of mythology began.
The obvious linguistic dimension of myth is not exempt
from philosophical problems. The first approximation to the
relation between language and myth would make us think that
the latter is a species of the former, for there are communica-
tive forms, like a political constitution, or a mathematical
reasoning, that, in principle, do not create scenarios with cate-
gories of traditional myths. However, if we examine a politi-
cal constitution in more detail, we can see scenarios that in a
direct or derived manner make reference to mythological set-
tings. Thus, for instance, in the Constitution of Athens,123 un-
derlying the comments of Aristotle concerning the administra-
tive proceedings of democracy itself and the laws, we find
concepts such as those of Diké, justice, or Eunomía, order,
that appear in Hesiod’s poem as the consorts of Zeus,124 ad-
dressing to a specific mythological world. In fact, the poems
of Solon that appear in the Aristotelian text are loaded with
mythic concepts in order to make intelligible, after the idea of
122
By rational psychology I refer to transcendental psychology, as opposed
to the empirical. It concerns a psychology that sets off from transcendental
postulates for the origin of human reason.
123
By Aristotle or one of his students. See the translation of F.G. Kenyon in
The Complete Works of Aristotle. Vol. II. Ed. Cit. p.p.2341-2383.
124
See Hesiod. Theogony. V.902. Translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-Whyte.
Harvard University Press and William Heinemann. Cambridge (Mass.) and
London. 1982. p.144.
72
purpose, the democratic actions which are described in them,

using Athens’ Lebenswelt as a final referent. The Athenian
case can be extended to other constitutions, for the concepts
used in them belong to the world of the community’s life,
inevitably linked to some mythology. And with mathematics,
as a communicative linguistic form founded on Ancient tradi-
tions, something similar occurs. Pythagoreans identified num-
bers with gods, like Platonists, who did not only share with
them the sacred character of numbers, but also used the myths
of Greek tradition as symbols to deal, intuitively, with philo-
sophical matters. Nonetheless, the religious treatment of
mathematics is far from being a characteristic of the Ancient
world. With the emergence of modern science, Galileo, and a
long list of mathematicians, considered that mathematics was
the language of God,125 and in the midst of the 20th Century,
Platonist authors such as Kurt Gödel believed that a mathe-
matical logic procedure provided a proof for God’s exist-
ence,126 what is equivalent to believe in the congruence of the
concept of God (of the Leibnizian Judeo-Christian tradition)
with the concept of the logical system. The very same idea of
the need for a logico-ontological proof implies that the con-
125
See Galileo. Opere. 4.171. Fragment in Morris Kline Mathematical
Thought: from ancient to modern times. Oxford University Press. Vol. 1
New York and Oxford. 1990. p.p 328-329.
126
See the proof in Kurt Gödel, Ontological Proof. Collected Works.
Vol.3. Edited by Solomon Feferman; John W. Dawson, Jr. ; Warren Gold-
farb; Charles Parsons; Robert N. Solovay. Oxford University Press. New
York. 1995 .p.403. The proof of God’s existence uses the concepts of modal
logic applied to Leibniz’s argument. Leibniz bases his proof on the concept
of an Ens perfectissimum, whose qualities are all perfections, or simple
positive qualities that cannot be limited. Since they are not limited by any
quality, if they are possible, must be actual.
73
cept of a supreme being is not something that can be intuitive-

ly attained, for it needs the help of a transcendental category,
like the ones appearing in myths. As we saw above, the cate-
gorical transcendental structure of mythological scenarios is
not enough to define myths, but it is interesting to observe
that it neither would be the provisional definition of myth that
we have adopted after its communicative functionality, since
there are processes of identity formation which do not con-
form to the traditional ideas of what myths might be: a politi-
cal constitution is no less a founder of the group’s identity
than an archaic myth could be. And something similar could
be said about mathematics, for its degree of development in
different cultures has determined the economic life of the
human group, something which at the same time determines
the identity of the group itself, that is, it is also a communica-
tive process from which foundational identity actions are de-
rived. Then, it seems that it is not so simple to separate com-
municative linguistic forms that we do not consider mythical
from the ones which we openly recognize as such.
There are further problems in our provisional definition of
myth. If narratives are just forms of human communication
they cannot precede the use of language. However, this is not
what we find in mythological traditions. In the Australian
case, in which at the beginning, the ancestors created the
world symbolically during a mythico-ritual walk, it is sup-
posed that some form of pre-symbolization had to precede the
walk about, but for there to be such a pre-symbolic estate, a
previous social communication should have existed. Since
there was nothing in the world, such communication could not
have occurred; therefore, nothing could have been created
during the walk. Here we hypostatize a finished and complete
totemic ancestor which produces a paradox. Likewise, in on-
74
totheological myths which support the creation by Logos (the

Om, etc.), language, as a divine attribute, precedes the very
act of narrative. The theological solution was to make the
Logos something more than a communicative act, more than
an instrumental means of implementing creation, by which -
expressed in Aristotelian terms-, in the concept of Logos we
synthesize the creator and his tool, the efficient cause and the
material cause.127 In the myths of Ptah, this divinity, which is
equivalent to the Logos, is finally assimilated into Ra. In
those of the Hindu Vedanta, the Om ends up being identified
with Brahman, The Koran with Allah, etc. In Australian
myths, this seminal content of the word, the Logos sper-
matikos, can also be found: the word is the light of individua-
tion which makes creation possible,128 a seminal nature which
has been the cause of a recurrent paradox concerning the
origin of language. A divine language, or ancestrally totemic
one, in the mythological terms of any of these traditions, is
something as complete and finished as the Divinity or totem
to whom it represents or with whom it is identified. The origin
of language is linked to the origin of the world; it is a part of
some cosmogonic tale. The first explanations concerning the
origin of language, whether the anthropological or theological
ones, take the form of myths that operate with transcendental
categories, -being language itself another transcendental idea,
127
Let us remember that to Aristotle (Metaphysics. Book Delta. 1013 a.24)
there are four forms of causal relation: material, efficient, formal and final.
In the well-known example of the statue, the material cause is the bronze,
the efficient is the chisel, the formal, the idea that the sculptor wants to
express, and the final is the production of a beautiful object.
128
This is also expressed in the first verses of the Prologue of St. John’s
Gospel.
75
assimilated to a transcendental concept of the human being or

the divine.
The transcendental character of language in archaic my-
thologies makes a myth of its origin, but myths about the
origin of language use language itself to communicate their
content, that is, they presuppose language, and so we are
thinking in circles without establishing an initial determina-
tion. Even if we try to give an explanation of the origin of
language not based on myths alone, but also on the relation of
language with objects, we find ourselves within a circular
reasoning, for we are trying to define a system, language, with
its own elements, something that is not possible, for there has
to be a point of reference external to the system in order for
the definition not to be circular. The first proposal offered by
philosophy in order to avoid this circularity can be found in
Plato’s Cratylus, a book in which a mimetic doctrine of com-
munication between logos and the objects of the world named
by logos is exposed. The paradox, as formulated by Plato, is
the following: the one who names has to know the things he
names, and in order to know things we have to know their
names beforehand, which implies that the first man who
named, already knew the names of the things he named. 129
The discussion is intended, not so much as to give a definite
answer about the mechanisms of the generation of language, -
and the link between word and object-, as to show the inco-
herence of Sophist theories which wanted to solve the prob-
lem on the premise of a human convention. Clearly, Plato’s
argument shows the paradox of a first possible convention.
129
See Cratylus. 438.a-b. In The Collected Dialogues. Princeton University
Press. Princeton. 1989. My references to Plato are always taken from this
edition, and in them I will give the traditional numeration of his work with-
out pagination.
76
The positive proposal is mimetic, and it is based on his Theo-

ry of Forms, entities which have a paradigmatic influence
over things and human intellect. Ideas in nature are fixed, and
therefore, in humans and objects alike, which are mimetically
created from these ideas. 130 Accordingly, the first humans
who used language formed an image of the object which con-
formed, spontaneously, to their corresponding ideal. Such a
mimetic theory is proposing as external element to the system,
and as referent to language, a pre-logical form of communica-
tion, i.e., is establishing by definition the conditions of possi-
bility for verbal communication, in fact, nothing but a form of
communication of a lower and more encompassing order. The
proposal is not so different to that of Vedanta, in which a
reality, which is both within and without the world (without,
as a condition of possibility and basis for the sacred word, the
Om) is postulated. Under these assumptions, ideas are at the
same time outside and inside the world, giving the mimetic
conditions of possibility for its creation.
Aristotle will naturalize Platonic mimesis by separating the
conventionality of signs, from the universal psychological
component that referents have: language expresses affections
of the soul which are common to all humans. 131 From this
simple proposal, it is derived that the origin of language is a
question of psychology, and in particular of the processes that
lead the live organism to perceive and think, placing the
origin of language in the sphere of rational psychology. Mi-
mesis has a cognitive function, and since all life is intelli-
gence, it will operate both in the plane of the natural132 as well
130
Cf. Plato. Parmenides. 132. d.
131
As he does in De Interpretatione. (16. a.) and in De Anima (431.a.1)
132
As the one he manifests in the Poetics (1448 b.5 and s.q.)
77
as in that of the universal. 133 To Aristotle, language is the

mind’s system of signs, and we understand its nature by ob-
serving its constituent elements and its referents, either the
world of the senses or the intelligible world of the animic
processes,134 (understood as vital processes): language points
to life. If actuality (as an opposed concept to that of possibil-
ity) of thought is life,135 the origin of language cannot occur
but in the process of life itself, an idea which will not be de-
veloped until the 19th Century after the accomplishments of
biological sciences. In humans, the vital dimension of lan-
guage reaches a level that is not attained by animals, due to
the complex social life of the city. Thus, in this way, language
is (in practical terms) a tool of the mind to communicate so-
cially and to determine rational life.136
Aristotle’s given solution to Cratylus’s paradox, -placing
an external referent for the purely linguistic action-, will serve
as a guide to Medieval Thomism,137 while Platonisms will opt
for mimetic explanations. 138 Nevertheless, what is given in
133
See chapter 4 about the mimesis in this Volume I.
134
Since all existing things are sensible or intelligible, and the soul is, in
some way all existent things. (Cf. Aristotle. De Anima. 431 b.31.)
135
Cf. Aristotle. Metaphysics. 1027 b. 27.
136
As Aristotle proposes in the Politics. 1253 a. 10-18.
137
See the Comentario a Perihermeneias de Aristóteles, by Thomas of
Aquinas. Book I. Lesson 2. #2.628. Translation in Los filósofos Medievales.
Vol.II. B.A.C. Madrid. 1979. (English Edition: Aquinas, Thomas, Expositio
libri Peryermeneias. Aristotle on Interpretation. Comentary by Thomas
Aquinas. Trans. Jean. T. Oesterle. Marquette University Press. Milwaukee.
1962.)
138
As Plotino’s emanations doctrine. The main change in relation to Plato is
the notion of emanation: from the One who is everything, things are gener-
ated, which originate from its substance. The One is immanent, and from it
noûs is generated, from which in turn the soul emanates, in whose bosom
nature occurs, to whom the soul orders manifesting in an invisible manner
78
these doctrines is an explanation to the functionality more

than to the origin, which will be finally ascribed to the sphere
of the divine, solving thus the problem by dissolving it into
the inscrutability of an omnipotent god. The problem will be
reopened with the European Enlightenment, mainly due to the
contradictions that the colonizing experience showed in rela-
tion to the accepted doctrines concerning language. The di-
vergence observed in the languages’ degree of development,
the differences in scientific knowledge and symbolic devel-
opment in general, contradicted the idea of an already com-
pleted Ursprache. Nonetheless, the old transcendental doc-
trines were maintained alive and well. It is interesting to no-
tice how this anthropological new data was intentionally ig-
nored in the texts written about the origin of language by Ni-
colas Bauzée in the Enciclopédie,139 who will continue main-
taining the ecclesiastical viewpoint, despite the fact that other
authors like Condillac or Rousseau had already made non-
dogmatic proposals for the explanation of the origin. Tho-
mism had separated the divine from the human dimension in
relation to language, by adopting the Aristotelian stand with
respect to human linguistic capacity, and the biblical one in
relation to the creation by the word, in which Yahweh, and
later Christ, were assimilated to Logos. The human dimension
of language reopened the old dispute of the arbitrariness of
the sign, including again within it in an unnoticed way the
semantic question, and reproducing the old paradox. Condil-
lac will say that signs are necessary for any reasoned reflec-
as the communicator of all movement. The emantation is thus a form of

prelinguistic communication. See Plotinus’s Enneads. Book V. Treaties 2-5.
Plotinus. The Enneads. Faber and Faber Limited.London.1966.p.p.369-414.
139
Nicolas Beauzée, Langue, (1765) in Enciclopédie. Diderot et
D’Alembert. 1751-1765, vol. IX, p.p. 249-265. Enciclopédie. Web.
79
tion, and that in order to conventionally establish a system of

signs, there must be some sort of reflection.140 Here, the se-
mantic dimension of human convention presupposes a society
and a language, and since human society has been character-
ized by language, we are using referents which are internal to
the system. Both Condillac and Rousseau are faced with
Cratylus’s old problem, and will also solve it mimetically,141
despite the differences amongst them in relation to the partic-
ipation of divine activity in the process.142 Both Condillac’s
imitative naturalist thesis for the development of the sign, and
Rousseau’s proposals, are inscribed within the Aristotelian
tradition more than into that of a natural philosophy, even
though none of the two is based on a rational psychology nor
on the simple empirical basis of nature’s observation.
The naturalist orientation, that in the History of Animals143
had led Aristotle to recognize their emotions, is not precisely
the starting point adopted by Rousseau in his emotional theo-
ry of language origin. Aristotelian mimetic naturalism follows
the postulates of a rational psychology founded upon the ne-
cessity of a natural law, something which is not found in
Rousseau, to whom language does not conform to the philo-
140
Cf. Étienne Bonnot de Condillac. Essai sur l’Origine des Connaissances
Humanines. Édition Électronique. Chicoutimi, Québec. Selon l’edition de
Ch. Houel, Paris. 1798. p.55. Web. (English Edition: Condillac, Étienne
Bonot, Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge. Trad. Hans Aarsleff.
Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. 2001.)
141
See the essay of Luca Nobile, La Grammaire de Condillac face au para-
doxe de l’origine naturelle du langage. In Vers une histoire générale de la
grammaire française. Honoré Champion. Paris. 2012. Web.
142
To Rousseau language origin cannot be explained from merely human
hypotheses. Cf. Rousseau, Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de
l’inégalité parmi les hommes. (1754). Une édition électronique réalisée à
Chicoutimi, Québec. p.30. Web.
143
Aristotle, History of animals. Book VIII. 588b. 1-3.
80
sophical concept of necessity, but to the own development of

passion: it was not the work of geometricians but that of po-
ets.144 Passions, to Rousseau, are necessities145 that speak of a
deeper reality than the one shown by rationality, and the mi-
mesis of language will take that reality as a model for imita-
tion. The word thus understood is full of meaning, and poetic
language will be a kind of natural revelation, a concept which
will later be developed by Kant in his theory of genius.
Herder, starting out from a critique to Condillac and Rous-
seau, frames again the question of the origin within a rational
psychology, and sustains that language is created when the
human being puts his reflection into practice, isolating an
element from the many which are offered to perception, up to
the creation of a Wort der Seele.146 Language is then bound to
a transcendent dimension (as it already occurred with Plato),
not mimetically, but through an intellective act that in humans
is inevitable and spontaneous, it is part of their nature. Herder
solves the language origin paradox –which, in the version of
Süssmilch used by him, takes the form of the necessity of
reason to invent language, and of language to develop the
most elaborate forms of reason- with the proposal that human
language is something as originary as reason, in fact, that
language follows naturally from the first ratiocinative use of
an external sign.147 By placing the referent on reason as some-
thing previous to language, Herder attains an external deter-
144
Cf. Rousseau, Essai sur l’origine des langues. (1781). Édition élec-
tronique réalisée à Chicoutimi, Québec. From l’édition A. Belin, Paris,
1817. p.11. Web.
145
Ibid.
146
Cf. Johan Gottfried Herder, Abhandlung über den Ursprung der
Sprache. Christian Friedrich Boss. Berlin. 1770. p.31.
147
Ibid. p.34. Süssmilch’s argument was intended to prove that human
language comes from the Divine.
81
mination to the linguistic system, and at the same time direct-

ly linked to it, although he will have to use as undefinable the
human soul which undertakes the process of reasoning.
Herder accompanies his rational psychology with the em-
pirical data that anthropological science is starting to gather,
in particular the myths of the American people, in order to
outline his theses. Supported by the animist evidence of ar-
chaic religions, and on his studies about the mythologies of
the Ancient world, Herder developed the hypothesis of a natu-
ral and progressive unfolding of human language through the
understanding, a process which would have run parallel to the
development of the ideas about the gods. Animism, which
sees in every object and living being a supernatural force
which merges with the natural one, shows, according to
Herder, how reason constructs signs with each perception,
how it interiorizes nature and interprets it. That is why, lan-
guage, and its organization into myths, is a register of the
evolution of the human soul, a history of its development, and
our dictionaries are ancient pantheons, since our first interior-
izations were the theological animations:148 myths capture a
primordial language of the human soul.
Herder’s proposal binds for the first time the reflection on
the origin of language to myths, a relation which, in different
interpretations, has traversed the philosophy of mythology
since then. Herder elaborates a theological interpretation
without the necessity of making language a divine invention,
by simply proclaiming the indissoluble link found between
language and reason, and considering that it is reason the one
which possesses the transcendental origin as faculty of the
human soul. To Herder, in the same way as language is the
148
Ibid. p.44.
82
external difference of our species, reason is the internal dif-

ference,149 and by internal we must understand here a tran-
scendental sense. The supernatural is simply the external pro-
jection of the human soul, whose reasoning principle is prior
to nature. However, his theory presents some difficulties in
relation to the development of language in animals because,
according to his postulates, also among animals there should
have emerged an animist language, and this is not so. If lan-
guage and reason have the same original content, there is no
motive that explains why in humans both coexist and in ani-
mals only the linguistic capacity does. If language were some-
thing natural and associated to reason, as Herder sustained,
animals should be communicating somehow in languages or
protolanguages similar to ours. Herder, conscious of the prob-
lem, had declared an insurmountable distance between human
language and that of animals appealing to rationality, some
sort of divine gift that animals do not have and which makes
our languages not congruent with those of the rest of living
beings. To Herder, animals have a language bound to sensibil-
ity, 150 but not to reasoning reflection, which constitutes the
distinctive trait of our human language. But this implies that
not the whole of nature operates under the same laws: there is
an arbitrary separation between men and animals, ab initio,
that impedes the possibility to consider the development of
language and mythology in humans as a natural phenomenon,
as the very same thesis of Herder pretends. In fact, by leaving
aside the languages of the animal realm, we create a disconti-
nuity which is equivalent to proclaiming a unique and inde-
pendent origin of our language, whose referent cannot be
149
Ibid. p. 39.
150
Ibid. p.74.
83
other than transcendental. Herder’s thesis is inconsistent with

his own explanations. It deals with an ontotheological pro-
posal based on a rational psychology, similar to that of Aristo-
tle, to which he has incorporated an explanation for the histor-
ical process of the formation of language signs, without fall-
ing into the paradoxes that were produced in the Aristotelian
theory in relation to the idea of the conventionality of the
sign, as treated by Condillac. With Herder the reflection on
myth is firmly established over a linguistic discussion that,
even though not completed by the communicative dimension
which would require a psychological and sociological focus,
removes the mythological discussion from the human-divine
axis and its contradictions.
Herder’s thesis had a slow process of maturation within
the first German Romanticism, a process where mythology
gradually gained philosophical credibility. The impulse came
from theology and Kantianism. From the Kantian perspective,
Gottfried Hermann considered mythic symbols as a mere
costume of philosophical concepts and ideas, which made
them apt for a critical investigation -beyond the mere histori-
cal analysis- in which both their origin as well as meaning
may be established, and the contradictions that they pose.
Although Kant had not paid especial attention to myths, from
his theory of genius was derived that if poetry was the art of
the genius, and myth displays itself in the poetic form, myths
present a supersensible scheme,151 refer to a moral reality that
is not directly shown by experience. From a Kantian view-
151
According to Kant, poetry presents that schema. Critique of the Power of
Judgement. 5:327. Cambridge University Press. New York 2000.p.204. My
references to the Critique of the Power of Judgement will be from this
edition, and I will only give the traditional numeration that appears in it,
without the pages.
84
point, human reason demands that appearances and their prin-

ciples have some relation with the supersensible substrate,152
thus the representations of mythology, to the extent that they
express modes of cultural organization, obey purposes, and
are susceptible to the philosophical examination proposed by
Hermann. On the other hand, from an exclusively theological
area, Friedrich Creuzer would sustain the thesis that as a
whole mythology offers a complete panorama of the religious
intuitions of the human being, due to the fact that in mytholo-
gy a complete divine revelation took place, entirely valid in
its message.153
Schelling will be the first to establish proper bases for the
mythological study. Herder’s naturalist contradiction, which
needed a divine artificer for reason, although not for lan-
guage, disappears when Schelling directly declares that nature
is spiritual, the manifestation of a supernatural will, some-
thing which was latent in the Kantian treatment of nature.
Inanimate as well as animate matter, Schelling will say, tend
to well-ordered configurations which belong to the realm of
concepts, performing blind actions which are propelled by an
ultra-powerful spirit that shines in men with special intensi-
ty.154 The problem of the agency of the ideal sphere over the
material world –dragged along since Plato’s philosophy-
whose resolution lacks any systematicity in Plato -since the
152
See the formulation of this requirement in Kant. Op.Cit. 5:429.
153
See Ernst Benz, Theogony and the Transformation of Man in Friedrich
Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. p.p. 206. Man and Transformation. Papers from
the Eranos Year Books. Princeton University Press. Princeton (N.J.). 1980.
154
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. Sobre las relaciones del arte con
la naturaleza. Trans. Alfonso Castaño Piñán. Sarpe. Madrid. 1985. p.67.
(German Edition: Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph, Über das
Verhältniss der bildenden Künste zur Natur. Mason. Munchen. 1807.)
85
cosmic mimesis that is postulated in the Timaeus155 and in the

Laws 156 is restricted to an ontological presentation without
accounting for mimetic mechanisms-, is reopened by Schel-
ling from a transcendental epistemology stronger than that of
Herder or Kant. The problem was linked not only with the
origin of language within the framework of idealist ontologies
but in a wider manner with the actual form of the agency of
the Divine in human affairs. The Critique of Pure Reason,
although softened in its postulates by the following Critiques,
dethroned metaphysics in favor of epistemology, placing the
philosophical edifice at the edge of collapse in the midst of
antinomies and paralogisms, and with it not only the legitima-
cy of the powers constituted over such metaphysics, but also,
with the sinking of metaphysics, history itself could be inter-
preted as an error. Kant hastened to manifest a purpose for
history and human societies that was in accordance with na-
ture, but his refutations of idealism and the demolition he
makes of the use of ontological proofs in order to prove God’s
existence, implicitly suppose the declaration that, for centu-
ries, European Christians have been living a fallacy. Kant
becomes aware that human life is interwoven by stupidity,
childish vanity and an eagerness for destruction, and that one
does not know where to stand in order to elaborate a concep-
tion about our species,157 although he postulates, against any
experience, that there is an end in history, an occult plan that
will be realized at a future moment.
155
Timaeus. 29. e. and sq.
156
Laws. 896. e. and sq.
157
Cf. Kant. Idea for a Universal History with Cosmopolitan Content. In
Moral and Political Writings. Translation: Karl J. Friedrich. The Modern
Library. New York. 1993. p.129.
86
Schelling establishes a philosophy of mythology when try-

ing to save humanity’s metaphysical past, an enterprise equal-
ly undertaken by Herder and later by Hegel. For that purpose,
he has to postulate, like Kant, that there is a hidden goal that
goes beyond the historical flow. Mythology serves him as a
link to this extra-historical stage, and therefore, myth has to
be part of a developing process whose dynamics have a nec-
essary-transcendental origin in a supra-historical sphere. 158
Myths mark the strata of the millennial development of the
human spirit, a development which is a spiritual analogy of
the biological phylogenesis.159 Since this spirit that unfolds in
history has an internal necessity or law in its process, the con-
cepts of false gods and false religions cease to have any
meaning: the metaphysical past is not an error. To Schelling,
gods are not only signs in which we can read a development
of a wider scope than the one they represent as mere figures
of particular religions. They are not allegoric, but tautegori-
cal, real movements of human consciousness in its theogonic
process.160 This thesis was implicit as well in Hegel’s Lessons
on the Philosophy of Religion. The different religious forms
corresponded to stages of development of the Absolute Spirit
which were progressively more perfect, which implies that
gods are partial determinations of the concept of such a Spir-
it.161 Schelling’s thesis proposes a meta-religion that histori-
158
Cf. Schelling. Historical-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of
Mythology. Lecture 9. Translated by Mason Richey. Sate University of New
York Press. Albany. 2007. p.p.139-148.
159
Cf. Ernst Benz. Op.Cit. p.210.
160
Cf. Schelling. Historical-critical Introduction to the Philosophy of My-
thology. Lecture 8. Ed. Cit. p.136.
161
See, for example, the treatment that Hegel does of the Hindu gods in
nature religions in Lecciones de la filosofía de la religión . Vol.2. Trans.
Ricardo Ferrara. Alianza Editorial. Madrid. 1984. p.p.204-226. (English
87
cally unfolds itself in a causal manner and culminates in

Christianism, something which implies that the Christian
principle had to be already contained, somehow, in the previ-
ous religions. Such a Christianization of mythology and of the
other religions, 162 destroys both Christianism, as a religious
practice, and the preceding different mythologies, for they
come to be merely partial contents –contradicting the preten-
sions of universality with which all myths operate- and only
find their adequate expression under an idealist ontological
interpretation, which is something like a last revelation, or a
modern revelation of a universal Christ, no longer bound to a
single time and space. This thesis, which will be responsible
for the development of the esoteric Christianism that ranges
from Rudolf Steiner to Jung, has been refuted by the historical
experience subsequent to its formulation, even though it was
absorbed, in sociological terms, by the doctrine of the histori-
cal development that positivism formulates.
Outside the scope of German Idealism, Schelling’s theses
on mythology awakened but slight interest. The stronger ob-
jections came from the moral sphere, which did not see a way
to conciliate the idea of a common historical theogonic plan
with the moral practices that were shown in archaic mytholo-
gies, considered as immoral. Mythology was an intellectual
trifle in which tales of moral perversion were presented.163 In
Edition: Hegel, G.W.F., Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Trans. R.F.

Brown, Peter C. Hogdson and J.M. Stewart. Clarendon Press. Oxford.
2006.)
162
See Schelling. Philosophy of Mythology. Lecture 9. Ed. Cit.
163
At a conference in 1871, Max Müller, a student of Schelling, still had to
justify in front of a British audience the interest of the mythological study,
surmounting the prejudice which considered mythological reflection as
something merely foolish and savage. See Max Müller. Chips from a Ger-
man Workshop. Charles Scribner´s Sons. New York. 1881. Vol. V. p. 54
88
a society like the European of the 19th Century, established

upon Christianism as well as over the materialist values of an
incipient science, gods could only offer the interest of signs
that point towards something else, as superficial elements of a
deeper reality that was worthy of investigation, that is, as
allegories, and not as theogonic history, something devoid of
meaning both for Christian theology and science. However,
Schelling’s philosophy represents the most ambitious on-
totheological synthesis undertaken by philosophy, a meta-
physical construction that creates a system where the most
basic notions of archaic myths can be accommodated –like
the one of anima mundi- together with the theologized princi-
ples of the physical science of the early 19th Century. 164
Shelling’s transcendental dualism starts out from the concep-
tion of a natural dualism which is integrated under the organ-
izing principle that he calls Weltseele,165 in which the tran-
scendental world of ideas and that of matter are agglutinated,
for matter and idea are forces merged ab initio in the phenom-
enon of life.166 This conceptual schema gives the conditions
of possibility of the mythico-historical or trans-historical pro-
cess, which, inasmuch as a process of life, does not give mar-
gin for error and contingency, since it proceeds in accordance
to the universal organizing principle of Weltseele. By propos-
ing a mythico-historical referent that underlies historical time
itself, Schelling integrates the different stages of the evolution
164
See the metaphysical doctrine from which the physiological processes
are interpreted in Von der Weltseele. Amazon Kindle. 2011. p.p. 147 and
s.q.
165
Cf. Ibid. p.13.
166
Cf. Ibid. p.153. Life is the unity of Licht and Schwere, light and gravity,
of the spirit and corporeity, as he manifests in Von der Weltseele, a princi-
ple whose duality serves as a justification of the mimetic phenomenon
between the ideal and the material.
89
of humanity and life into a conceptual unity, although at the

cost of an arbitrary creation of an over-arching ontotheologi-
cal order that does not correspond neither with the principles
of intuition nor with those of reason (since antinomies and
paralogisms are not solved, but merely ignored), and which
being outside human experience (in fact, it is postulated that
the human being is not conscious of the process as a whole)
ceases to have any interest to any philosophical anthropology.
Schelling’s proposal of a philosophy of mythology, of a
general reflection over the identity narratives that the human
being has elaborated, did not need to be based on strong on-
totheological assumptions,167 as in fact Herder’s proposal had
done. Max Müller, Schelling’s student, managed to establish a
science of mythology independent of theology by linking the
former to language. The interest of mythology now resides in
the fact that it opens up a new knowledge of the past of the
language and people of Antiquity, not in relation to material
culture, as anthropology will study, but directly to their ways
of thinking, to their psychology. Myths are not the theological
reality that Schelling formulates from his meta-religion, they
do not have an existence outside human mind, that is why the
science of myth is most of all a science of the archaic lan-
guage, a language that has gone beyond its first intention,
which was no other than to express the natural phenomena in
an allegorical manner. 168 Just as Herder, Müller provides a
natural explanation for human language and separates it from
the language of animals by linking it -in a non-dissociable
manner- to human rationality. All that is formal in language,
167
By strong ontotheology I mean an ontology in which the transcendentali-
ty of its main categories is central to the conceptual edifice.
168
Max Müller. On the Philosophy of Mythology. In, Chips from a German
Workshop. Ed. Cit. p.80.
90
he will say, is the result of a rational combination, while all

that is material, is the result of a mental instinct.169 By mental
instinct Müller seems to understand a spontaneous and inevi-
table form of thinking in which the first metaphorical expla-
nations of natural phenomena are gathered. Thus, for instance,
myths such as that of Helios and his chariot, are nothing more
than tales used to explain the natural phenomenon of the
Earth’s rotation that produces the perception of days and
nights. From this point of view, mythology would be some-
thing like an ancient dialect that has survived due to its sacred
content, but which is loaded with mistaken interpretations of
phenomena and false moral ideas. To Müller, the mythologi-
cal metaphor, by allowing literal interpretations of the gods’
actions -which only have a figurative sense-, becomes a men-
tal illness of language, and ends up affecting human thought
itself. 170 Müller can make these considerations without pro-
ducing a collapse in the meaningfulness of human history by
founding his doctrine on a Christian ontology with the status
of a revealed truth, superior to any of the other religions be-
cause its moral precepts are more stable and universal, some-
thing which qualifies Christianism as a referent to determine
the validity of the precepts of any other religion.171 His psy-
chology is based, as in Schelling’s case, upon Christian tran-
169
Cf. Max Müller. The theoretical stage and the origin of language. In,
Lectures on language. IX. Chips from a German Workshop. Ed. Cit. p.391.
170
Cf. Max Müller. Contributions to the Science of Mythology. Longmans,
Green & Co. London. 1897. I, 68 s. Cited in Ernst Cassirer. Antropología
Filosófica (English Edition: An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a
Philosophy of Human Culture. Yale University Press. 2nd Ed. New Haven
(CT).1962.). Ed. Cit. p.p.166-167.
171
These ideas can be read in his Lectures on the Science Language (Lec-
tures on Science of Language. Charles Scribner´s Sons. New York. 1862.)
and On the Philosophy of Mythology (Chips from a German…Ed.Cit.)
91
scendental morality, feeling uncomfortable with the morals of

the ancients, primitives, and contemporaries who may deviate
from Christian norm. This viewpoint seems to ignore that
entire civilizations172were organized by these metaphors for
thousands of years, a fact that proves that there is something
in such tales which serves as social unifying force and genera-
tor of meaning. Müller does not investigate what this could
be, and rejects the archaic mythological phenomenon on the
basis of a moral pathology diagnosed under universal ethic
principles. The idea of a pretended sanity of an axiological
code in relation to another ignores the human moral genealo-
gy and its psycho-biological conditionings, besides presup-
posing that there is a meta-moral code, a concept which is
inseparable from the idea of a single supernatural being and a
moral ordering of the cosmos, which implies some hypostases
and no less antinomies that arise from the differences between
social action and physical action.173 In this sense, the alleged
psycho-linguistic foundation for myth proposed by Müller
points to the metaphysical postulates of a Christian rational
psychology.
172
For the moment, until we have at our disposal more precise mythopoeti-
cal concepts, I will use the concept of civilization, in a somewhat vague
manner to designate any form of urban social order.
173
Kant resolves the antinomy of the practical reason, the difference of
causation in the physical world and the moral world, between natural neces-
sity and freedom, declaring at the same time that the human being is both
appearance in relation to the natural world and noumenon in relation to the
moral one, and consequently as a being capable of living in these worlds
and maintain them apart or join them according to his will, stopping the
conditionings of physical causations, or becoming primal cause of the world
after moral principles. See The Antinomy of Practical Reason, in Critique of
Practical Reason. 5:114. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. 2006.
92
On the other hand, the explanation of myth offered by

Müller from the allegories of natural phenomena is insuffi-
cient. It is true that there are a high number of myths that ex-
plain -in a naïve manner for a scientific perspective- an ample
catalogue of natural phenomenon, but we cannot reduce all
myths to this single type of tales. Myths that bear a relation to
social issues, from the ones that speak about the foundations
of communities to those that give the laws, or relate what is
the origin of some economic activity, are not necessarily alle-
goric, however much they may contain religious symbolic
metaphors or images. Rome’s foundation, for instance, or any
of the myths we find concerning the foundation of physical
cities,174 does not pretend to be the explanation of any natural
phenomenon, and together with some allegorical images, like
the breastfeeding of the twins with the she-wolf –animal con-
secrated to the Italic god Mars-, which serve to support the
divine lineage of the Latium kings, the myth simply establish-
es the city, and this city is not a symbol of any other city, nor
a sign for anything else.
The attempts to understand the origin of language sup-
posed a starting point for a philosophical reflection about
myths, showing both the validity of the linguistic perspective
in order to approach the mythic phenomenon as well as the
limitations and paradoxes associated with rational psycholo-
gy. The origin of language, the first point to elucidate in order
to understand the linguistic construction of myths, pointed
towards the field of zoology, already since Condillac and
Rousseau, although, by being in all cases concerned with
rational psychologies -transcendental about the final referent
174
I refer to historical cities, not to imaginary cities, like the celestial Jeru-
salem, or the ones that have been considered as the residence of the gods or
the dead.
93
for reason-, the postulates that separated human from animal

language closed, ab initio, any empirical consideration that
would go beyond the philological analysis of the formation of
the natural linguistic system and its metaphorical content. On
the other hand, rational psychology had taken the social struc-
ture as given, without examining the function of mythic
communication in social processes, something which will not
be initiated until sociology –from naturalist viewpoints- ex-
amines the anthropological value of myths, in the work of
Durkheim and Mauss, and posteriorly, in the structuralist line
of thought. Nonetheless, the philological analysis of the myth-
ic metaphor is interesting in order to establish a basic episte-
mological framework for myth, as the Herderian proposal
showed, and requires further consideration.
2.2 Metaphor and Literalness of Myths
Mythological semantics has a clear metaphorical composi-

tion, an aspect that draws the attention from the viewpoint of
philosophical and scientific languages, which look for preci-
sion by formalizing and protocolizing its elements. However,
if the examination is performed from the valuation of the Le-
benswelt, from a community’s uncritical heritage of
knowledge, which is expressed in all kinds of images, paral-
lelisms, substitutions and allegories, the metaphorical content
is something common and ordinary. To say that myth is met-
aphorical is not to characterize it by a specific difference in
relation to other forms of linguistic expressions, for all human
natural languages are metaphorical. From this observation,
94
Ernst Cassirer postulated that myth and language have fol-

lowed a similar evolution due to the fact that they share a
common root: metaphorical thought. What is more, he re-
duced the characterization of myth to the elucidation of a
theoretical question: to determine if it is speech that generates
myth, due to its metaphorical original nature (as Max Müller
proposed) or if, on the contrary, it is myth the one that has
provided language of its metaphorical character, as Herder
and Schelling proposed.175
Cassirer distinguishes two kinds of metaphor. The first one
is defined in a narrow sense as the conscious denotation of a
thought’s content by the name of another that resembles the
former in some aspect.176 This definition is basically that of
Aristotle, to whom metaphor is to give to a thing a name that
belongs to another, 177 even though, while for Aristotle the
metaphor emerges when naming, to Cassirer is a psychologi-
cal question that involves intersubjective mental contents
within a community. Metaphors, in this first Cassirerian
sense, are possible to the extent that a human group may share
a common experience in which the substitutions of a term by
another may be understood without problems. The applicabil-
ity of these metaphors is limited to small communities, in
which the translations, per se, are already lexicalized and are
known beforehand, and the metaphorical voice may coexist
175
Cf. Ernst Cassirer. Language and Myth. Dover Publications. New York
1953. p.86.
176
Cf. Ibid. p.86
177
There are four types: from genre to species, from species to genre, from
species to species and by analogy, this last one understood as the compara-
tive relation of four terms that are taken in two pairs. For instance, if we
establish that a shield is to Ares as a cup is to Dionysus, we can say by
analogy: the cup of Ares or the shield of Dionysus. See Poetics 1457b.7 and
s.q.
95
with the ordinary one, the former enriching the latter in a se-
mantic expansion.
The second form of metaphor, which we could call radical
metaphor, is the one that translates an impression from the
realm of the ordinary to a mythico-religious realm, is the one
that produces not only a transition to another ontological cat-
egory but the creation of such a category.178 This would be
also a variation of the Aristotelian notion of metaphor as the
translation of a name between two different categories. Since
Cassirer is not a Platonist, considers that the category over
which we project the ordinary sense is not there as such, but it
is created in the metaphorical process, and the resulting object
of that creation is myth. If the radical metaphor linguistically
precedes the ordinary one, Herder and Schelling’s thesis
would be correct, that is, it would be the transcendental cogni-
tive relation the one imposing its structure: human language is
an operation of interpretation of the physical reality in terms
of the transcendental conditions of reason (the idea in Schel-
ling’s case), a reason that expresses itself through myth. If the
precedence were inverse, if it were ordinary speech the one
that, due to its metaphorical form, would generate the linguis-
tic reality of myth, this one would not be more than an epi-
phenomenon, in fact, correctible, as Müller proposed, given a
sufficient degree of rational reflection. How could we know
which one is the relation of precedence? In Schelling’s thesis,
the semantic referent of the metaphor, the term to which a
categorical translation is applied, is transcendent, while in
Müller’s thesis, the categorical translation is merely human. It
is thus a question of an ontological dispute that cannot be
resolved through argumentation, since there are discrepancies
178
Cf. Cassirer. Op. Cit. p.p.87-88.
96
in relation to the fundamental entities and the relations that

configure each of the theoretical models.
Cassirer will propose a third route, an epistemological
framework that is not limited to language, in which myth as
well as language are in a reciprocal determination, in an orig-
inal and indissoluble relation from which both gradually
emerge in an independent manner.179 Cassirer’s thesis appeals
to an original relation between the form of mythological and
general language, a first relation in which art is included, that
seems to refer to an essential state of affairs, even though,
from his Kantian epistemology, he hastens not to place the
sense in the past, and regenerates mythical language through
artistic language, in which the archaic representation gives
way to the aesthetic turn -which transforms the former after
freedom.180 Although the explanation may be valid in relation
to a possible common root (which is left unspecified) for or-
dinary language, mythological language and art, 181 it says
nothing about the basis of myth’s content, nor about its ability
to generate meaning for human life, neither what its relation is
to the organization of the community’s life, the establishment
of cities, legal codes, and economic structures that are directly
linked to myths.
On the other hand, in so far as a myth or tale is a linguistic
phenomenon, unthinkable outside a given language, to postu-
late that a linguistic phenomenon is related to language is as
confusing as it is obvious, for it says nothing new although
appearing to extend some kind of meaning. Our traditional
myths are expressed, from our modern point of view, in ar-
179
Ibid.
180
See Cassirer. Op.Cit. p.98.
181
Cassirer’s postulates also show how part of the mythopoetic element has
continued its evolution in art.
97
chaic linguistic forms. Their metaphorical turns are the ones

of every natural language,182 in fact, our language is a great
process of symbolization, of substitution of chains of some
signs for others, or for experiences, fixing internal organic
processes in relation to external processes. Languages, natural
and formal ones, are metaphorical in their proceedings. They
make maps of meaning over new terrains, and always -as it
could not be otherwise-, from the ones known. Up until today,
none of the maps of the world and ourselves is definite, and
not because of the existence of a process of asymptotic ap-
proximation to a natural way of things that would allow us to
advance towards less metaphorical world views, but because
myths must adapt to life conditions as much as the other way
around, in a process that configures at the same time the hu-
man and the universe in which he lives.
It does not make sense to assign the categorical reification
that facilitates the radical metaphor to the metaphor itself, to
the simple fact of substituting one thing for another. Explain-
ing the creation of man from the metaphor of a potter artisan
that molds his clay, does not inevitably reify the potter’s
world, but there must be also a reifying intention, a conviction
that the metaphor in some manner conveys the natural way of
things, and that somehow maintains a relation to our human
constitution. Our language facilitates reification, for when
speaking about something, even if is not part of human expe-
rience, we objectify it as an element of speech. This capacity
of language to represent what is not directly in the space-time
experience at the moment of speech, gives the how, but the
what comes determined by an emotional world that gives
content to the hypostasis. It does not have to be necessarily -
182
As opposed to formalized language.
98
as religious experience shows-, the figure of a god, but any

image that fulfills a series of requirements in relation to its
capacity to order and orient the experience of a social group
would be enough.183
Cassirer’s thesis of a double metaphorical and emotional
content of myth and language is already present in the work
of Nietzsche, as the contrast of two concepts: the Apollonian
and the Dionysian, a pretendedly aesthetical approach to
Schopenhauer’s metaphysical concepts of representation and
will. The limits in which Nietzsche tackles this question are
not strictly mythological but epistemological: the Apollonian
and Dionysian function as general ontoepistemological cate-
gories, in particular, as presumed forces of nature. Nietzsche’s
metaphysical reflection is not solely limited to mythic repre-
sentations, but he includes in the Apollonian-Dionysian oppo-
sition any linguistic form of representation –even those of
science-, as a contrary force to an urgency towards unity, to a
painful and passionate existence, ecstatic, complete, to a pan-
theistic impulse that assumes as joyful the most terrible quali-
ties of life.184 What we call world is nothing more than an
Apollonian dream of order which has proven its vital utility,
but it does not have any objective reality. The continuous
change prevents us from speaking of individuals, or, in other
words, the identity principle is an Apollonian illusion. In fact
–Nietzsche will say- a world that finds itself in a perpetual
state of becoming cannot be comprehended or known, what
we call world is a prefabricated image based on appearances
that have served to preserve life, and there can only be
183
Take as an example the anthropomorphic explanations about the origin
of the world, or the atheistic religions of Buddhism and Jainism.
184
CF. Friedrich Nietzsche. The Will to Power. #1050. Translated by Wal-
ter Kaufmann and R.J. Holingdale. Vintage Books. New York 1968. p.539.
99
knowledge of these appearances. 185 The biological value of

knowledge implies that the different categorizations, be it
those of science or religion, are nothing more than useful
fictions, phantasmagoria that are superposed over a Dionysian
cosmic vital impulse, a kind of life’s fundamental emotion
that is responsible for the action of the universe. The Apollo-
nian is an interpretation of this force, a necessary linguistic
configuration for life forms to prosper.
Besides the economic relations that intervene in myth for-
mation, the Nietzschean thesis, which sees in every linguistic
phenomenon the sign of a vital emotional force, blends Schel-
ling and Müller’s formulations in an analogous manner as
Cassirer would do later, although setting off from a different
basis. While to Cassirer language and the mythic image are
worlds in which the human spirit moves, but without being
fixed to any of them, to Nietzsche, it is the Dionysian spirit,
which characterizes the creative man, the one who uses lan-
guage and mythic image for his will to power, not being sub-
jected to either of them. Both consider that these means, word
and myth, are forms of self-revelation;186 to Nietzsche, of a
supra-humanist self-revelation, aristocratic and materialist,187
and to Cassirer, of a humanist self-revelation, democratic and
idealist.188
Nietzsche’s thesis of self-revelation which implies the un-
derstanding of the biological basis of knowledge,189 although
contrary to Hegel and Schelling’s postulates of the progres-
185
Ibid.# 520. Ed.Cit. p.281.
186
Cf. Cassirer. Language and Myth. Ed. Cit. p. 99.
187
Like the one he formulates in his theory of the eternal return.
188
Cassirer, Antropología filosófica (An Essay on Man: An Introduction to
a Philosophy of Human Culture.) Ed. Cit. p. 333-334.
189
See book third of The Will to Power.
100
sive development of non-human consciousness in history –

and in general to any idea of a consciousness as life’s engine-,
is, paradoxically, analogous to such theses when it comes to
the existence of a non-human will: the will to power (or Dio-
nysian principle), which determines a universal order as also
did Der absolute Geist or the Weltseele of the German Ideal-
ism. The interpretation of signs has now the human being as
referent, but can still be carried on, and continues to be hypos-
tatized. Myths show the cosmic emotional force, the Dionysi-
an, in different forms, and are tools for human knowledge as
such.
The Nietzschean idea that there is an emotional current
that underlies language and form, and that, although it is ex-
pressed in these elements, has a deeper and more genuine
content than them, will provide the theoretical conditions for
the subsequent psychoanalytic theory. The link between
myths and dreams is, per se, mythological. From directly
mythological examples -as the one of Vishnu who dreams the
world-, to the communications that gods and ancestors make
to humans in their dreams, the oneiric and mythic worlds have
always been closely related, a relation which constitutes the
basis for the animist theory. However, from the point of view
of the relation between language and myth, psychoanalytic
theory does not contribute with anything that was not already
in the Schelling-Müller dispute and the subsequent synthesis
of Nietzsche and Cassirer.
On the other hand, these theses about the metaphorical or
transferential content of language, are not considering that the
very same question of the figurative language does not make
any sense until we define what literal meaning is. The impos-
sibility of an absolute literal sense for language allows only to
speak about figurative language under close conditions, with-
101
in a specific tradition in which the referents and transferences

may be fixed or lexicalized up to a point. If I say, for instance,
that the sun is the eye of Ra, I am thinking about the expres-
sion as a transference, but the devotee of Ra in the 18th Centu-
ry B.Z.190 had nothing else in which to transfer the object of
his perception, for he had no other concept to superpose over
the luminous circle he was perceiving. If we were to ask to
the Christian devotee about Lazarus’ resurrection, he would
not consider that it is a figure of language, it would not be that
Christ has awakened him to a deeper understanding of exist-
ence from a previous ignorance, nor that He has returned him
to life after a psychological death, a depression, or that He has
healed some neurosis that Lazarus may had, no, to the devotee
resurrection is literal, as it was for the devotee of Attis, Osiris,
or Adonis, who took the form of the cereal plant literally, as
for the Christian the bread and wine at mass is literally the
body and blood of his god. The idea of a literal referent, as
opposed to a figurative one, is nothing but a later myth, philo-
sophical, in which new frames of reference are established, in
relation to which myths themselves become metaphorical
objects. To Plato, ideas are the final literal referent and not the
objects that exemplify them -always in an imperfect manner.
To Copernicus, planetary orbs revolved literally around the
sun because of their form, and these orbs were as literal as the
planetary crystalline spheres that preceded them in the Middle
Ages, while today all these descriptions have a metaphoric
value, since they communicate an intelligible figurative mean-
ing from the point of view of the theory of relativity. None-
theless, when we say from the physics of present times that
190
By B.Z. and A.Z. I mean before the so called year zero and after the so
called year zero of the astronomical calendar, which corresponds to the 1
before Christ of the Gregorian calendar.
102
the universe started with a big explosion -although the idea of

an explosion may have some figurative sense- physics is not
considering the Big Bang as a metaphor of something else. In
the same manner, when Schelling proclaimed the tautegorical
content of mythologies, their literal character as a stage of a
theogony, was declaring the construction of a meta-
mythology, and when Müller considers the Christian moral
god as literal and the other gods as imperfect metaphors, ill-
nesses of language’s infancy, does nothing but Christian my-
thology. Additionally, Nietzsche’s thesis -that makes of the
Dionysian the emotional substrate of the universe- is a my-
thology in which the literal element is the Dionysian will to
power, to which the metaphorical forms of the Apollonian are
subordinated as determinations whose usefulness is survival
in a continuum of creation and destruction.
Mythologies are then literal for those who live according
to them, their ontologies are literal, and can only be allegori-
cal when we can think of them as signs for another referent.
Mythologies remain open in relation to the vital experience of
the community who elaborates them, that is, are constructed
on the basis of the experience of that community, and are
literal in relation to the actions and objects which constitute
such experiences. The devotee who called eye of Ra to the sun
in Ancient Egypt, or the human who thinks today that the
universe started with a big explosion, are always literal within
their mythical frame of reference: the universe is literally
expanding, Ra looks to us through His eye and knows about
our things. In both cases, we project our linguistic system
over nature and we find referents that we consider final, we
construct a linguistic exomorphism, a translation of meaning
that expresses a conceptual ontological web, be it the one that
corresponds to a supernatural being or to a merely natural
103
action. These ontological concepts are always literal, are not

metaphors of anything else.
The linguistic process of exomorphization was already un-
derstood by Ludwig Feuerbach in relation to the ends that
religion, as well as cultural processes in general, pursue. Such
end is none other than to change the non-familiar experience
of nature into something familiar and comprehensible, to melt
the harshness of the natural world into the warm elements
which constitute the emotional human world. 191 This is an
epistemological process, for making familiar is nothing more
than to make routinary and unproblematic, to contrast the
known with the unknown, to elaborate a substitutive represen-
tation, an intermediate sign that may link the new object of
experience –whether physical or conceptual-, to the quotidian-
ity of linguistic exchanges. In this sense, mythologies have an
epistemological function that operates as a complete system
of ordering.
Mythologies do not only trace the limits of linguistic expe-
rience through exomorphisms. As memory systems in which
the experiences and values of the past are gathered, they are
closed in their process of composition and narration, and to-
gether with ontological exomorphisms, linguistic endomor-
phic processes are produced which also involve an expansion
of the ontologization. Thus, when Homer says that the Dawn
(goddess common to the Indo-European people) has rosy
fingers, Dawn, being the name of the goddess, and she a lit-
eral being to the believers of the Olympic religion, is an exo-
morphism, while the rosy fingers are an endomorphic figure.
Endomorphisms are rhetorical games of language, signs that
191
Cf. Ludwig Feuerbach. The Essence of Religion. #34. Tranlated by
Alexander Loos. Prometheus Books. New York. 2004. p.35.
104
refer to objects or other signs which in turn refer to other

signs, although not in an unlimited manner, for the system is
relatively closed semantically at a given moment in relation to
exomorphisms, otherwise there could not be communication.
The objects to which the signs refer are final when they are
not the metaphor for another object. The table is not a final
object, since we know that it is made of some material, organ-
ic or inorganic; final would be the concept of material atom
(in Antiquity), or of subatomic particle (Fermions and Bos-
ons) in the present world. In this sense, endomorphisms can
arbitrarily form chains of signs as lengthy as we want them to
be, while exomorphisms determine finite chains between a
literal or final representation and a metaphorizable representa-
tion. If we understand by endomorphic chain the sequence of
signs that links two representations that can be metaphoriza-
ble into another, and by exomorphic chain the sequence of
signs that links a literal representation to a metaphorizable
one, we could say that the endomorphic chains are proteic, in
the sense that different chains of signs –that in principle refer
to different objects- can end up indicating, based on the game
of substitution and analogy, towards the same referent. The
Homeric expression of the rosy fingers is nothing more than a
possible translation out of many others for the experience of
the colors of dawn (being this preceding expression another
possible morphism), and increasingly more distant expres-
sions of sings can be connected and nested together by diverse
processes of meaning translations in a game that may be as
long as our will to play it. Instead of the rosy fingers, we
could talk about other rosy parts of the body, or of her breath
of fire, or of the rose of Dawn, or the torch of Dawn at night’s
border, etc., and in every case we are referring to the optical
phenomenon produced by the rotation of our planet. This has
105
been the traditional game of rhetoric and poetry. However, in

exomorphisms, like the one of the eye of Ra (an endomor-
phism to us but not to the devotee of Ra), the object is not
proteic and an indefinite sequential substitution of signs can-
not be performed, for the eye is not a metaphor, but the visual
organ of a supernatural being who looks at the earth from the
firmament. I can substitute eye for expressions considered as a
synonym, but not for another part of the body. Similarly, in
order to speak of the Big Bang, instead of explosion, we could
substitute the concept for that of expansion, inflation, exten-
sion, separation, acceleration, etc., and the concept of initial,
with that of first, primordial, originary, etc., in the same way,
and we would not be altering the sense of the expression. But
still, the antonyms of these substitutive words would not ap-
ply, as for example, posterior contraction, due to the fact that
the expression entails a literality in the expansive image.
The action denoted by the Big Bang expression, or the ob-
ject denoted by the eye of Ra, are singularities, expressions of
concepts irreducible to others. However, since the linguistic
signs employed to denote them belong to a closed system of
human signs, such a representation remains trapped within the
representational play of a given historical community, and are
established bonds with the singularity which allow its descrip-
tion, that is, the making of metaphorical figures. Linguistical-
ly, the singularity is denoted by proper names. In this sense,
the step towards the metaphor from the literality of that which
is unknown and singular is an inevitable process, as Max
Müller had understood in his study about the descriptions of
natural phenomena that mythology undertakes. According to
Müller, the process is the transformation of a quality into a
noun, a nominalization. Thus, the name given to the sun in
Greek mythology, Hyperion, is derived from the preposition
106
ύπέρ, which means on high, and the desinence –ιων, which

simply expresses belonging, thus Hyperion means the one
who is on high.192 However, it would be more precise to say
(since a predicate presupposes a subject) that the passing is
from an action to a substantive:193 from the action of shining,
to the action of shining on high, and from there to say that
which shines on high, and later on, more metaphorically, to
the one who lives on high. This is, not by chance, the name
that the tribes of Altai give to their storm god, Bai Ulgan, The
One Who Lives on High. The action of shining is the literal or
singular content, which is posteriorly nominalized, to be ob-
jectified once we have a new mythological frame of reference,
be it this the one of Christianism (or any other religion which
does not identify the sun with the Divinity) or that of science.
Thus understood, we could talk of a figurative epistemologi-
cal dynamic, a process of linguistic appropriation of the un-
known or undefined (apeiron) which begins as literal to be
progressively substituted by linguistic images that point to
more common areas of experience. I call this process mythol-
ogization.
Thus, I call mythological exomorphism to the determina-
tion of a linguistic limit, to the establishment of a literal repre-
sentation. A mythological endomorphism is any process of
linguistic figurative incorporation of a literal representation.
Mythologization describes the sequential processes of exo-
morphisms and endomorphisms performed by human groups.
Myths contain exomorphisms, which determine the limit or
liminal conditions, the ontological representations, as well as
192
Cf. Max Müller. On the Philosophy of Mythology. Chips from a German
Workshop: Miscellaneous Essays. Ed. Cit. p. 80.
193
As Herder understood. Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache. Ed.
Cit. p.43.
107
endomorphisms which are elaborated and developed into

tales. Exomorphisms determine the limit of the group’s expe-
rience, while endomorphisms link the liminal representation
to the Lebenswelt, besides serving as the transformative basis
for the representations of the world of life. When the process
of mythologization is inverted, when the common representa-
tion is progressively made more liminal, we find ourselves, as
we will see later, in a process of divinization:194 The human
ancestor becomes less and less familiar, turning into a semi-
god, and the civilizing ancestors, become gods, some of them
even turn into dei otiosi and distant gods, with whom the hu-
man group ceases to communicate.195 Mythologization and its
inverse action are reifying linguistic processes in which the
objects and scenarios of the Lebenswelt of a community are
semantically conformed.
Nonetheless, in order to understand the linguistic functions
of mythological endomorphism and exomorphism we cannot
simply do so by reflecting upon the information which is con-
tained in the mythologies themselves. Metaphysical specula-
tion, whether from the standing point of German Idealism, or
that of Müller’s linguistic psychology, or Nietzsche’s emo-
tional psychology, can tell us little about the origin of lan-
guage, or about its metaphorical content. If we wish that the
forwarded hypothesis in relation to the process of mythologi-
zation may count with an epistemological basis that is not
founded upon reifications, we would have to construct a theo-
ry of rationality in which the development of human language
may be treated from the point of view of psychology. Without
the evolutionary and neuroscientific perspective, we are lim-
194
See Appendix B.
195
See Part III. 3.1.1. Mythic Plane of the Anima Mundi.
108
ited to ontotheological standpoints that solve matters in a

transcendental (and paradoxical) way, or to historico-critical
perspectives that take for granted in their proceedings that the
solution to the mythological question does not require more
empirical data, as Cassirer does, but that it can be reached
through the elucidation of the concepts already formulated by
the philosophical tradition.
The metaphor, as it already occurred with traditional on-
totheological categories (although for different reasons), is not
enough to characterize myths. The linguistic dimension of
myths points us towards a general theory of interpretation,
understood as a function of epistemology, psychology and
social action.
109
CHAPTER 3
Forms of Memory and

of the Understanding
3.1 Myth and History
Traditional myths were not only in charge of the misty

world of the gods and the universe’s origins, but also of the
much more tangible of social life, the birth of the city and the
group’s order. Thus, a study of myths exclusively undertaken
from the point of view of das Heilige veils the processes of
mythologization of the profane, the endomorphizations that
take place in economic everyday life activities, besides offer-
ing a distorted image of the subject matter which is being
treated in the archaic myth, by negating or minimizing the
human, all too human content, of social identity formations
and hierarchical organizations.
In this sense, myths cover the domain of narrative form
that later will be called history. In fact, the historical narrative
111
CHAPTER 3: Forms of Memory and of the Understanding
arises as a variation of the mythological narrative from a

change in the ontoepistemological paradigm in which the
concepts of fact and necessary sequence are taken as limits or
literal references. In Greek culture, the muse Clio, daughter of
the Titan Mnemosine (Memory) was in charge of inspiring
the historical tale, a blend of perspectives that exemplifies the
archaic vision of the relations between the different narrative
forms about the past. To Aristotle, while history relates what
has occurred, poetry deals with what could have happened,196
something that allows a speculative degree of maximum in-
terest to the philosophical observer, especially in epic and
tragedy. When it does not offer what happened –the facts-,
when it does not relate the correct order of past actions, poetry
gives a frame of possibility, a theoretical scenario in which, as
in a temporal map, is given a description of the psychological
forces that have led to produce these or those actions. For this
reason, to Aristotle, myth is more philosophical than history,
since it deals with the universal, while history is limited to the
particular.197 We can understand this universality of myth, not
so much in the sense of covering a speculative field of wider
scope than the one which the historical treatment allows, lim-
ited by the facts, but in its psychological dimension, which
makes its contents valid for more than one historical scenario.
An adequate treatment of the notion of causality in relation
to historical thought requires a previous treatment of the con-
cepts of rationality and social action -which I will perform
later on-, however, I would like to make some observations
about the relationship that history and myth have with the
concept of the origin. The divine actions that we find in tradi-
196
Cf. Aristotle. Poetics. 1451b.1-5.
197
Ibid.
112
tional mythologies are of two kinds, cosmogonic and econom-

ic. The first deal with the question of the group’s origins and
its fundamental ontological categories, while the second cover
the questions of everyday life –to which we can also call eco-
nomic- in relation to foundational matters: civilizing heroes,
protocols of productive actions, etc. A cosmogonic action
cannot be considered historical, since it is of a different order.
It is the action that creates the universe and is the condition of
possibility of history. An action is historical to the extent that
belongs to a sequence of actions being known through an
investigation, by means of an ordered intellectual effort in
which a series of events or actions -what has happened-, is
made to correspond with a chronological series (according to
a standard) that not only follows human intuition, but a valua-
tion of the bonds amongst actions, allegedly objective, inde-
pendent of the observer. This alleged necessary law of order
of human events is the so called historical causality or histor-
ical necessity. Each action of the historical narrative causal
chain has a preceding one and another that follows it, but not
so the action that supposedly inaugurates the sequence, whose
special character in the series, produces antinomies of reason
when the content of the history is cosmological, and biologi-
cal nonsense when we speak of the primary cause of human
history. History as a science could not treat this idea of prima-
ry cause of humanity because our human social dimension
emerges from a non-human ground, not researchable after the
concepts of social science. The analyses, for example, of the
economic and environmental relations that led to the for-
mation of Neolithic cities, are not of the same kind as the
analyses about the origin of the homo-sapiens, neither in their
methodology, nor in the definition of the domain of investiga-
tion. In the study of Neolithic cities, we limit ourselves to the
113
social actions that represent a segment of another segment -

more ample- of social actions, avoiding the problem that the
concept of origin entails. The chains of causation that give an
account of the human origin continue up to the beginning of
life in our planet, and go on from there, in a projective and
risky manner -after a very long mental voyage-, to the sup-
posed origin of the universe, a concept which, as Kant had
shown, produces insurmountable antinomies.
On the other hand, the economic action undertaken by a
god, as we observe, for instance, in the tale of Prometheus
teaching the use of fire to men, or Marduk establishing the
city of Babylon, cannot be considered historical, because a
divine agent, if there were one, would not belong to the same
causal order as a human one, its actions would not correspond
to specific human necessities, they would not be based on
social actions, nor its causation would share the same space-
time of human history. It is for this reason that the investiga-
tion about the conditionings that concur in the diverse divine
actions upon human groups would be impossible, because, as
the priests of all mythologies -since we have record of them-,
have not ceased to repeat, god’s will is inscrutable and re-
mains outside our comprehension. We cannot have at the
same time the inscrutability of the action of the god and the
historicity of such action, for they belong to different ontoe-
pistemological orders. The idea of a sacred history is a con-
tradiction, for if we accept, as Thucydides, that what charac-
terizes historical thought is a critical investigation of tradi-
tion, 198 the critical investigation of myths would lead us to
discard as impossible the better part of the actions they relate.
198
Cf. Thucydides. The History of the Peloponesian War. Oxford Universi-
ty Press. Oxford. 1981.p.p. 41-42.
114
What is the difference between a sacred history and a

myth? If we take as an example the criterion that Catholic
Church has about the historical content of the Bible, sacred
history does narrate facts that have taken place (a narrative
which is already a revelation), among which it will be includ-
ed, the sin of the first fathers, the birth of Christ, His death,
His resurrection, etc.199 Nevertheless, we know from compar-
ative mythology, that there are other sacred tales that narrate
sins in the first fathers and resurrections, as the Iranian myth
of Mashye and Mashyane, to whom Ahura Mazda orders to
do Good, not to praise the demons, and abstain from eating
(being this last request especially hard to fulfil), and whose
violation will cost them a hellish stay until resurrection day. 200
Resurrection is also spoken of in the myth of Osiris,201 in that
of Baal from Ugarit,202 in the mysteries of Cybele,203 in the
case of Lemmikainen of the Finno-Ugrian mythology,204 or in
the final resurrection of Islam.205 However, these other narra-
tives of similar actions, are not considered sacred history from
the Christian point of view, but myth. The sacred history of
another culture is a myth, it is a mere tale which does not have
a link to individual and social life, while one’s own, is history,
199
See the general introduction to the books of the Holy Writ. In Sagrada
Biblia (Holy Bible). Version Nácar-Colunga. Madrid 1985. p. p.1-17.
200
As we read in the Bundahishn (Creation). Chapter 15. Translated by
E.W. West. Sacred Books of the East. Volume 5. Oxford University Press.
1897. Web.
201
As it appears mentioned in the Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom.
Pyramidtextsonline.com. Web.
202
In the tale of the fight of Baal against Mot gathered in the Tablets of the
Cycle of Baal (1920. Tablets of Ras Shamra). Web.archive.org.
203
As Frazer tells us in Chapter 34 of The Golden Bough. Ed. Cit.
204
In Canto XV of the Kalevala of Lönnrot. Ed. Cit. p.p.209 and s.q.
205
In The Koran, 6:37, 8:25, etc. See references given in the edition of
Olive Branch Press. New York. 1991. p.668.
115
and not due to its higher factual content, contrastable in an

objective manner, but because it is experience bonded to ritu-
al, and made real through a systematic repetition within a
ritual, as we shall see later, that belongs to the Lebenswelt.
Myth, including the notion of sacred history, builds its
own origin, in fact, what we observe by analyzing the diverse
world mythologies is that myths establish primitive206 deter-
minations for the whole set of actions of human experience,
be it the actions that have to do with the origin of the cosmos
or with the economic actions of the group. Mythologies elabo-
rate matters of experience, but are not limited to it, instead,
they interpret and recreate it. In myths, the origin does not
have the problematic content of the historical causality, but
that of the literal or liminal representations which generate
exomorphisms. Any representation that may correspond to a
literal concept establishes a point of origin, a foundation
whose epistemological value is referential in the group’s vital
praxis, and allows to structure -in a consistent manner- the
linguistic activity by means of final representational referents.
These referents do not limit themselves to being part of cogni-
tive functions, but are hypostatized and developed through
mythological endomorphisms.
On the other hand, although myths have common episte-
mological elements with literature and history, their occur-
rence does not take place in the same conceptual frameworks.
History, as a register of human actions implies an interpreta-
tion of social facts whose rigor of veracity is not the goal pur-
206
My use of the adjective primitive applied to determination has an analo-
gous function to the qualification of axioms as primitive formulas in Math-
ematical Logic. Therefore, a primitive determination simply means a de-
termination (not necessarily exomorphic) for which other determinations
are derived, never as connoting an opposition to modern.
116
sued by literature. It is precisely in this point, that myth re-

sembles history, since it intends for the referent of its narra-
tive content to be an action that happened, in ille tempore,
though no less truthful and charged of meaning. In the case of
history, actions are presented as necessary, as the product of
an inherent causality within them, in the same way as in lit-
erature, while myth’s cosmogonic actions and the economical
ones performed by the gods are not governed by the same
kind of narrative coherence, for there is a lack of causal co-
herence in all those actions that emerge ex nihilo, or after the
inscrutable will of the god.
The difficulty in determining a clear image of what hap-
pened is a problem that affects both history and science, a
problem that does not concern myth, whose identity is always
compact and unitary within its own community. What has
been accepted by the group as referent of the past has absolute
value as long as it may not be contradicted by experience in a
radical manner, in continual actions of destruction that may
compromise the group’s survival. We have examples of this
in the Melanesian Cargo myths207and, in general, in all cases
in which a culture has imposed itself over another in a mili-
tary or economic way. In history, the past is brought to
memory as a recollection, while in myth, especially when it is
linked to ritual, the past returns as a repetition of actions that
took place in ille tempore with the same effective value that
once had. While history conceives time as linear, mythic time
is circular, thus the foundational action is seasonally revived,
not as something remote, but as part of everyday life experi-
ence, and equally unquestionable.
207
Read in Volume III. 1.1, about this topic.
117
The action that does not remain imprinted in the mythic

narrative has a different entity than the one not imprinted in
the historical narrative. While the latter is conditioned by the
selection that the historian makes of the information that he
considers relevant within a limited number of possible data,
the datum that the myth provides is not presented as the prod-
uct of an investigation, a ίστορία, but as the way things are,
and in an analogous manner, that which is omitted is not left
out because it is not relevant, but because it is simply nothing.
However, the difficulties that historical investigation has in
order to scrutinize the origins with the same level of certitude
with which it is investigated that which is at hand -due to the
psychological and social loads of perspective in the investiga-
tion-,208 make myth and history meld when they turn to their
common source in the utmost distant past.
We tend to establish a comparison between the historical
narrative made from the present with the contents of ancient
myth, which it would be equivalent to judge Pre-Socratic
physics by Quantum physics theories and determine that both
discourses are radically different, although having physis as a
common object. For a more balanced judgment, myth should
be compared with its coetaneous history, when there is one,
contrasting mythical thought with the thinking of the epoch.
Precision and clarity, not to speak of general intuitions about
human existence not based upon uncritical accords, are but
very recent conceptions, and of a decidedly specific kind of
thought. Let us remember that, for example, in the middle of
the 18th Century, science was giving to our planet an age of
208
See the comments of Adam Schaff about this topic in La objetividad de
la verdad histórica. In Historia y verdad. Editorial Crítica. Barcelona 1983.
p.p. 321-373. (English Edition: Schaff, Adam, History and Truth. Pergamon
Press. Oxford. 1976.)
118
only 75.000 years, a quantity that Buffon gave arbitrarily in

his Théorie de la Terre,209 eager not to enter in disputes with a
Church that measured time biblically, or that it will not be
until Leibniz that the idea of Hebrew as the original language
of humanity will be questioned, 210 a dispute open until the
studies in comparative philology made by Max Müller in the
19th Century. If we compare these historical worldviews with
myths we obtain a higher proximity amongst them than if we
were to do it with the historiographical or scientific investiga-
tion of the present in general. In fact, in many other cases, the
comparison of myths with their contemporary historical
thought does not even make sense, as in the case of cultures
without writing, for, since there are no objectifications of the
past beyond those of phonetic signs, the conditionings of hu-
man memory impede the fixation of causal sequences that
surpass the very limited sphere of the group’s actions, and the
thinking over pre-literary past does not have the characteris-
tics of historical thought. Without writing, the objectification
of the past into facts that history requires is only partially
attainable through oral myth, and outside small communities
there is no possibility for a memory of the group’s actions –
except for the more or less vague establishment of a few sig-
nificant acts. The impossibility of historical thought without
writing is only due to the reflective character and the handling
of high quantities of information which characterizes histori-
209
A work of 1749. What we read in it is more similar to Presocratic phys-
ics than to today’s geological science: the mountains have not been com-
posed by the waters, but produced by the primordial fire. (Cf. Geoges Buf-
fon Theorie de la Terre. In. Las ciencias de la tierra en el S.XVIII. Historia
general de la ciencias. Taton, René.(ed.). Historia General de las Ciencias
(General History of Sciences). Vol. VII. Translated by Manuel Sacristán.
Orbis. Barcelona. 1988. p. 753.
210
Cf. Max Müller. Lectures on Science of Language. Ed. Cit. p.135.
119
ography -being unviable to oral thought-, but also to the appa-

rition of a new conceptualization of time which it is only pos-
sible after written thought. Through it, as Ssu-Ma-Chien un-
derstood, oblivion is avoided, and, at the same time, the histo-
rian reveals himself to the future, 211 creating a concept of
temporal continuity that serves as support for a new psycho-
logical relationship between narrator and audience. Myths,
whether related by the shamans of Altai, by the poets who
sang the Shahname at Sasanian courts, or by the Rishis who
composed the Indian Vedic poems, were intended to a face-
to-face audience, in many occasions as part of a ceremony,
others, as a ritual entertainment, but always into a performa-
tive framework with a perfectly delimited audience. Written
history, however, creates a virtual audience that is in the fu-
ture, and it is spoken to with the oracular power of the one
who reveals the past and offers the truth of what happened.
On the other hand, through written history is created an addi-
tional character to those of the tale, the historian, whose indi-
viduality and particularity relativize what is narrated, and at
the same time give a testimonial content to it (lacking in tradi-
tional myth) which, by representing the point of view of an
observer, reifies what is observed as something objective.
Thus, when Ssu-Ma-Chien says: this is my opinion as an his-
torian, 212 and right after relates how he personally climbed
Mount Chi, in whose summit the grave of the mythical Hsü
211
Cf. Ssu-Ma-Chien (ca. 145-85 a.c). Letter in Reply to Jen An. In The
Norton Anthology of World Literature. Volume A. Beginnings to A.D. 100.
Lawall, Sarah, and Mack Maynard, Editors.W.W. Norton & Company. New
York and London. 2002. p.p. 865-866.
212
Cf. Ssu-Ma-Chien. Historical Records. The Biography of Po Yi and Shu
Ch’i. In The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Ed. Cit. p.867.
120
Yu213 is supposedly located, established two degrees of narra-

tive, that of facts, and that of opinions -his as much as those
of others-, which inevitably objectifies the facts at the same
time that subjectifies the opinions, to the point that we over-
look that the selection of what constitutes the historical fact
and what does not, as well as the causal psychological links -
the determination of goals for the actions and the interpreta-
tion of the circumstances- are always relative to the narrator’s
frame of reference, or more precisely, to the narrator and his
culture.
The separation of history and myth in relation to their nar-
rative structure and their epistemological assumptions, gets
even more entangled due to the general relation that exists
between word and action, between the dimensions of linguis-
tic and vital action. Historical subjects, individual or social,
have lived and live mythologically, that is, establish their
most intimate beliefs on a set of values that are gathered into
traditional tales which shaped them as social personae of their
own human group, in a process of enculturation parallel to the
formation of the social personality. These values are far from
being scientific propositions, in fact, at best, are unprovable,
when not absolutely contradictory or simply hallucinated. The
mythic word influences directly the actions of the main char-
acters of history. Let us recall, for example, how at Mycenae
courts, thirty two centuries ago, the voice of the rhapsodists
could be heard singing diverse legends about the heroes’
hardships. The kings received the stimuli to live adventurous-
ly, they could feel within themselves the forces expressed in
literature, and gave them physical form, in wars, conquests,
palaces and great works. Let us remember the influence that
213
Who rejected the mythical offer of the throne by Emperor Yao.
121
the Homeric Achilles had during the entire life of Alexander

the Great, and that of Alexander over Caesar’s, who explicitly
encouraged parallels between his actions and those of Alex-
ander,214 or the influence that the Gospel writings have had in
the formation of Europe’s politics, or the influence of Wagne-
rian myths over the German Third Reich. Human actions,
whether glorious or terrible, have a tale behind that sustains
and founds them. Whether in the Tablets of the Law on crude
rock, with which Moses and Yahweh tamed the difficult peo-
ple of Israel, or in the teachings of the Buddha that were be-
hind the Ashok Maurya Indian Empire, or in the Biblical tale
that leads the Spanish to destroy the American cultures, or in
the Marxist rhetoric of the Chinese Constitution, myth is be-
hind all social action. The phenomenon is traceable up to the
origin of writing itself and the warring expansions. All the
narratives that we have about the conquests of the Near East
kings, from the Asian campaigns of the Egyptian Tutmosis II
(1490-1436 B.Z.) engraved on the walls of the temple of Kar-
nak, to the different warring conquests of the violent Assyrian
kings of the 9th Century B.Z., which are attested by the differ-
ent stelas in which the kings engraved them for posterity,
show very clearly that from the first moment there was a nec-
essary link between writing and vital action. Actions are writ-
ten not only to preserve their memory, to avoid their loss in
the ocean of time, but also to complete them. Only the action
linked to the word can endure, since it is the word what en-
dures. Thus was understood by king Shalmaneser, whose
intended heroic behavior only makes sense in the adequate
literary context, something that the Assyrian king did not
214
See Michael Grant. Julio César. Translated by Fernando Corripio. Edito-
rial Bruguera. Barcelona. 1971. p.203. (English Edition: Grant, Michael,
Julius Caesar. M. Evans & Co. Lanham (MD). 1992.)
122
achieve with his stela, 215 because –although the memory of

the action remains- his pretensions of heroism have not really
endured, for no poet constructed a hero from the words that
we read on it, and after centuries the only thing that remains is
a massacre perpetrated by another general, victim of some
violent self-legitimizing psychopathy. The action must be
interpreted, it requires a special kind of word, the literary,
whether poetical or historical. From a psychological point of
view, the literary word recreates what has occurred by seman-
tically fixing the ambiguities of a social action, binding it to
other actions. The word humanizes the automatism of the
action, which otherwise would be a mere accumulation of
sensations and emotions within the animal sphere. For this
reason, history fixes actions by inventing memory and seman-
ticity, which blurs with the passage of time, due to the physi-
cal loss of memory as well as to the changes of referential
frameworks of epistemological interpretation which transform
the exomorphisms into endomorphisms. That semantic differ-
ential is responsible for the fabulous content that can be ap-
preciated in most archaic tales, a differential which is pro-
duced by the transformation of a literal or liminal representa-
tion into figurative ones.
Myth’s exomorphic content, the literal representations, are
the ontological elements which cannot be allegorized, repre-
senting a final object that the thought cannot handle by means
215
We read in the Stela of Shalmaneser: “At that time, I paid homage to the
greatness of all the great gods and extolled for posterity the heroic
achievements of Ashur and Shamash, by fashioning a sculptured stela with
myself as king depicted on it. I wrote thereupon my heroic behavior, my
deeds in combat (...) I fashioned a stela with myself as overlord in order to
make my name and fame lasting forever (...)”Shalmaneser III: The Fight
against the Aramean Coalition. Ancient Near East.Vol.1. Ed. Cit. p.189.
123
of substitute representations. These are endomorphized, pro-

gressively included in the metaphorical process of language,
in the vital process itself, in the mere use of the concepts and
objects denoted by the final representations, in a development
that ranges from the action to the object, passing through
nominalization. Although historical narrative cannot deal with
the origins, it tries to make consistent discourses, but it is not
exempt of literal representations besides the endomorphic
ones. Exomorphic representations of history are such concepts
as historical fact, causality, purpose, and in general, all the
epistemological and psychological ones. These concepts are
literal, and when they are not, their translation of meaning is
found outside the historical field. Thus, for example, the his-
torical fact is a general concept that designates the minimum
element with which history operates, a kind of variable con-
ceptual atom that the historian organizes in sequences accord-
ing to criteria of causality, but these atoms are not metaphors
of something else. Precisely, the allegoric interpretations of
historical facts, made by Hegel, Schelling or by Christianism,
imply a meta-historical process whose foundations are outside
of history. When an historical fact ceases to be literal, it also
stops being an element of a conceptual historical construction,
analogously as when in a physical system we allegorize one
of its elements, we abandon physics in favor of metaphysics.
On the other hand, it is interesting to observe the uncritical
content (of Lebenswelt) of many of the concepts used by his-
tory. Thus, when it employs final elements that are metapho-
rizable from another science -as for example in relation to the
concept of purpose, which can be substituted by other repre-
sentations of psychology-, it employs them in its own sense,
historically, as if the translation of sense from the notion of
purpose of the biological action to the notion of transcenden-
124
tal purpose (manifest destiny, etc.) of the social action were

unproblematic and clear.
History’s reinterpretations can derive from the establish-
ment of new exomorphisms, due to a change in the frame of
reference, or to the generation of new endomorphisms. When
history only reinterprets the actions of the past endomorphi-
cally, proceeds as mythology does (and religion) in relation to
the exomorphic kernel. Here it would be more precise to
speak of a revitalization than of a reinterpretation, since it
concerns an uncritical action in which the frame of reference
is absolute and unmovable. When new exomorphisms are
produced or the exomorphic condition of an element is
changed into an endomorphic condition, we do change the
frame of reference, and we can speak of a reinterpretation. A
change of this kind entails a change of mythology. If I inter-
pret, for example, the figure of Christ in prophetic terms in-
stead of in divine terms, I abandon Christian mythology to
enter into Muslim mythology. Something similar occurs with
historical interpretation: if I understand the social events of
the 19th Century from Mill’s perspective, I use a frame of
reference different from the one that is required in a Marxist
interpretation. In mythological terms, it would be equivalent
to a change of mythology, for the final representations are
different, and the resulting narratives are as dissimilar as dif-
ferent myths are. In this sense, it would be necessary to use
the noun history with adjectival terms such as, Marxist, Bour-
geois, Native, and other different ideological frames. From
the viewpoint of Positivist history, this is the end of the histor-
ical discipline, and so it has been, in a process of mythologi-
cal reversion that unveils the origin of historical thought. His-
tory is rewritten because it is reinterpreted into other frame-
works and this process is a mythologization. Thus, it seems
125
reasonable to me not to separate strictly mythology and histo-

ry in relation to their social functionality, neither in relation to
the uncritical use of their exomorphic representations, alt-
hough their common epistemological orientation (the interpre-
tation of past experience) has grounds on different conceptual
frames. We can, therefore, think of history as a process of
mythologization in relation to the old tales of the gods and
ancestors, which has gotten rid of the problem of the origins
by passing it to other sciences. Such a process of mythologi-
zation is undertaken from a general scientific frame of refer-
ence whose ontology is not based upon supernatural beings or
actions.
Social processes of memorization, insofar as they follow
narrative guidelines of sequential verbalization, follow a dy-
namic that is analogous to the processes of recovery of explic-
it memories in individuals,216 which, as experiments show, is
more an action of filtering than a precise reconstruction of
events.217 The incidents that have taken place can be forgot-
ten, even memories of actions that were never experienced
can be perceived as genuine memories, 218 due to the ad-
vantages derived from the preservation of an individual or
collective identity that can involve a suppression or lie, be it
deliberate or the result of an interpretative error. Historical
216
Explicit or declarative memory is defined by contemporary neuroscience
as the storage of information regarding people, places and things which
requires conscious attention in order to be activated. (Cf. Erik R.Kandel. In
Search of Memory. W.W. Norton and Company. New York. 2007.p.437.)
217
Cf. John T. Cacioppo and Gary G. Berntson. Analyses of the Social
Brain through the Lens of Human Brain Imaging. In Social Neuroscience.
Psychology Press. New York. 2005. p.2.
218
Cf. Daniel J. Siegel. La mente en desarrollo. Desclée De Brouwer. Bil-
bao 2010. p.95. (English Edition: Siegel, Daniel J., The Developing Mind.
The Guilford Press. New York. 2012.)
126
tales bring together referential sentences (which place actions

in space-time) and interpretative ones, creating a valuation of
the past which goes beyond the general interpretation of expe-
rience that all human languages entail. The interpretation of
the past is filtered by the present in a manner both intentional,
to serve purposes of manipulation of present events, and un-
conscious, due to the handling of different exomorphisms that
produce a different Weltanschauung. Myth has also this dou-
ble component of referentiality of actions and of interpreta-
tion, even though the weight of the interpretative psychologi-
cal factor is greater than that of dating and setting of actions
in a specific order.
Mythic narrative and history build genuine memories from
the events that none of the living members of a given com-
munity experienced directly, and over this phantasmagoria, to
the extent that it serves to order the life of the present, a social
identity is constructed. In this sense, history and myth are
based upon the faith in someone else’s testimonies, over-
lapped over the faith in the reality of one’s own community,
which implies the worship to the authority responsible for the
tale, almost always an ancestor, and when not, the authorita-
tive voice of the community, who defines a framework clearly
formed by literal representations.
3.2 Historical Consciousness and Mythologization
When we think about history from our present-day per-

spective, we do not proceed only, as Thucydides or Ssu-Ma-
127
Chien did, from the occurrences of some specific facts in

time, but instead we include unperceptively in the concept, a
full historiographical and philosophical tradition which has
reflected upon the general occurrences of human societies. To
this we have to add the fact that by history we are not only
referring to reflections whose object are social actions, but we
are including natural history as well219 , and trying to place
human history in relation to it, with more or less intellectual
fortune, but with a degree of chronological precision which
was completely unknown in the 19th Century. We do not think
history as Herodotus did, neither as Hegel, and even so it is
not hard to find references in social philosophy and in politi-
cal praxis to the notion of historical consciousness or histori-
cal memory, as if those were concepts expressing homogene-
ous social facts in the whole of human past, and not merely
concepts of philosophical interpretation.
The notion of historical consciousness partly emerged
from the reflections that philosophy made in the 18th Century
concerning historiography, but most of all by a general reflec-
tion that had taken place on all sciences in relation to their
own origins, which, in one way or another, implied the ques-
tion of man’s origins. In this sense, historical consciousness is
a philosophy of history, a particular reflective interpretation
from some given ontoepistemological point of view of the
memories which constitute the heritage of a social group as a
219
Consider, for instance, the treatment of the geological ages and physical
conditions that constitute the opening of the monumental work The Cam-
bridge Ancient History: “The perspective of history begins with the origin
of the earth, and develops through geological time until the stage is ulti-
mately set for human evolution.” (D.L. Linton and F. Moseley, “The Geo-
logical Ages”. Introduction. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. 2007.
p.1.)
128
whole. An example is offered by the Hegelian system, or by

Shelling’s meta-historical system, in which memory is adjust-
ed inside a metaphysical schema of the universe with certain
given characteristics, in Schelling’s case, within a trans-
human project that was started outside the historical processes
themselves. Another instance, no less metaphysical, although
now limited to the becoming of human memory, is the
Diltheyan proposal of a particular historical beginning for the
concept of historical consciousness, linked to the end of cy-
clical forms of thinking. According to Dilthey, we could trace
its origin in the confluence of the philosophical tendencies of
Philo’s Hellenistic Judaism, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, and
the first Christian philosophers. 220 For the possibility of the
emergence of such a way of thinking, the synthesis of cyclical
and linear conceptions of time was first necessary, something
that happened with the irruption of the supernatural element
into human history, the appearance into historical time of the
divine figure and the divine plan, making it sacred.221 Cyclical
time, as it is understood in most mythologies, shows a struc-
ture that proceeds from an initial instant full of meaning, a
golden age, and progressively deteriorates until it reaches an
end, from whose decadence a new cycle emerges, and thus ad
infinitum. It is the structure observed in the course of the sea-
sons, associated with plant life and animal species. Cyclical
myth, insofar as something is repeated in it, declares crea-
tion’s perfection, its finished and final content which returns
again and again, even if that perfection is, as in Hinduism, the
dream of a supernatural being. On the other hand, linear myth,
like the one we read in the religions of the Book, implies a
220
Cf. Wilhelm Dilthey, Introduction to the Human Sciences. Wayne State
University Press. Detroit 1988. p. 229-230.
221
Ibid.
129
duality of substance between creator and creation (arisen from

nothingness), by which the latter, considered finite and imper-
fect, can only be solved within the perfection scheme of the
supernatural creator, with the return of this finite component
to its maker, a final reabsorption into the divine, like the one
proposed by Christianism, which entails a unique cosmic
cycle. Certainly, a linear creation presupposes a zero sub-
stance of a different order than substance one, from which it
is derived, but in relation to which there must be a difference
that endows it with an identity of its own, while a circular
creation implies that from substance n, substance zero will be
once again derived. In any case, a cosmogony which applies
supernatural categories, whether linear or circular, presents
similar antinomies, and functions socially in an equivalent
manner to a myth.
If we observe historical thought prior to philosophy of his-
tory, we see its direct link to the phenomenon of writing, that
is, with an effective change on the material conditions of hu-
man memory, on the basis of which a process of expansion of
the past’s horizon and a focusing of its contents is initiated.
Although the sense of historicity did not start with the phe-
nomenon of writing, it was drastically changed by it. In Egyp-
tian, Babylonian, or Assyrian222 texts, we find military chron-
icles, treatises, lists of king’s names, temple’s dedications to
divinities, alongside legal codes, oracles and prophecies,
spells, or narratives about the gods, where not only the identi-
ty of the group is outlined in ever more complex degrees but
also takes place a better understanding of the changes of life
reshaping the representations of the past. History is a particu-
222
See the wide list translated in The Ancient Near East: A New Anthology
of Texts and Pictures. Vol. I and II. Ed. Cit.
130
lar form of record, the symbolic marking which objectifies

action into language through a self-conscious process of nar-
rative construction. It suffices to read the texts of the Akkadi-
an letters (18th Century B.Z.), or the Egyptian love songs (13th
Century B.Z.) 223, or the Sumerian royal hymns -whose narra-
tive construction of the I of the King God (besides a procla-
mation of a universal I, almost Whitmanian) includes within
the script the action of reciting the text itself-224 in order to
observe the degree of consciousness already attained concern-
ing the act of writing and its documental value in relation to
memory. In the hymn of Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon of
Akkad, the document gives references in relation to the gods
and the authority of the law (the Me), in addition to narrating
historical events in a testimonial tone which includes frag-
ments of Enheduanna’s biography.
Historical thought does not exclusively arise in Christian
mythology, as Dilthey suggests. The historicity of Christian-
ism is the result of some millennia of historical thinking to
which historiographical Greek reflection has been incorpo-
rated, impregnated, as it was, with the epistemological de-
mands for making fact based discourses. However, historicity
as the intuition of the course of time and the conditioning of
the past over the present is independent of the degree of rigor
with which the historian or chronicler may recover their in-
formation, as it is also independent of the fact that a cosmog-
223
In song C of ANET 467-469, we read: she is more to me than the col-
lected writings, sentence which supposes a reference to writing within a
writing. In fact, it will be told that such writings are especially valuable,
although not as much as the beloved. The Ancient Near East: A New An-
thology of Texts and Pictures. Vol. I. p.258.
224
Pronounce my exaltation, saying: He that is ….See the text of The King
of the Road in The Ancient Near East: A New Anthology of Texts and Pic-
tures. Vol. II. Ed. Cit. p.p.132-135.
131
ony may be cyclical or not. If we are to select thoroughness as

the determination for historical thought, we could not give the
concept an existence of more than a hundred years. Historical
data and its manipulation in archaic historiography are from
our perspective of digital information and modern dating,
unacceptable, although we accept them in all their impreci-
sion as a token of old ways of interpretation, and extract valu-
able information from, precisely, their disinformation. 225 If
the criterion is the absence of cyclical metaphysics, as Dyl-
they proposes, we could not consider historical, for instance,
the writings of the Artha-Shastra by Kautilyia, 226 in which
Chandragupta Maurya’s counselor gives references about five
historical schools concerning the art of government, 227 -an
historicity without which should be impossible to write such a
politico-economic treatise. Even in cyclical metaphysical
systems like Jainism, or Hinduism, in which souls reincarnate
unceasingly, the guiding thread of those lives is the concept of
karma, strictly linear, which produces the intuition of the
irreversibility of the Jiva,228 even if it is outside of life. We
could, of course, discard altogether the historicity of this kind
of systems, which do not consider the human as referent, i.e.,
225
Thus, for instance, the General Estoria, or the Primera Crónica General
of Alfonso X of Castile, whose documental value is not found in the thor-
oughness of the information which provides. Example: En esta cibdad de
Atenas nasció el rey Júpiter, e allí estudió et aprendió y tanto, que sopo
muy bien todo el trivio et todel cuadrivio…. (In this city of Athens, King
Jupiter was born, and there he studied and learned so much, that he knew
very well the trivium and all the cuadrivium…) (General Estoria. Book VII.
Chapter XXXV. In Antología de Alfonso X el Sabio. Ed. Antonio G. Sola-
linde. Espasa-Calpe. Madrid. 1984. p.109.)
226
Who was a Jain brahmin.
227
See the commentary of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles Moore in
A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy. Ed. Cit. p.193.
228
Basic metaphysical substrate that reincarnates in multiple lives.
132
which do not refer to the social group in its economic actions,

and declare that they deal with mythological narratives and
not with historical ones, but additionally, it would be neces-
sary to discard, under this criterion, the systems of Hegel and
Schelling, whose roots reach beyond experience, or Christian-
ism itself, for the same reasons.
When we speak today either about historical consciousness
or historical thought, we include the reflections provided by
the practice of more than two hundred years of philosophy of
history, and these have shown in their theoretical multiplicity,
that there is not a unique way for thinking the matter, whose
problematic character leads to discrepancies even in the defi-
nition of the thinking subject and the object of study. Thus,
for instance, Marx had sustained that the abstract idea of man,
separated from the context of class, does not make any
sense,229 implying that neither the concept of history, nor that
of historical consciousness could be independent of class
consciousness. Marxist theory postulated that human con-
sciousness, in the sense of ideas and conceptions about life, is
incomprehensible without the determinations that lead to
changes in human material existence, and that such a con-
sciousness is changeable according to material conditions.230
But not even from the materialistic point of view, which takes
into account economic determinations, can we postulate fully
intelligible units of historical study, because not only the idea
of an abstract human being is an hypostasis inheritor of myth-
ological tales, but neither are social institutions objects which
have had an homogeneous definition throughout time, and it
is not so clear which one of these could be the social agents
229
Cf. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto. (English
Edition. 1888). III.1. Reactionary Socialism. Amazon Kindle. p.25.
230
Ibid. p. 19.
133
that we can theoretically postulate in a diachronic analysis.

We have an example in the five societies that Arnold Toybee
characterized as objects of study for contemporary history,231
social agglomerations derived from twenty one civilizations
of the past that, although defining space relations among di-
verse civilizations, are conditioned by a specific imperial
dialectic which, per se, is an historically conditioned ideolo-
gy, which would hamper in us the understanding of social
objects not in conformity with the dimension of these macro
units.
Historical reflection is thus an interpretative construction
of some social life concept, that might be either a part of the
group’s life, or the life of the group taken as a whole, or an-
other wider social unit. It involves a process of interpretative
reflection upon the group’s memories, a development acceler-
ated by changes in the material conditions for keeping and
retrieving records, like the one produced in the past by writing
or by computers today, from which it results a new narrative
of identity, whether local or cosmopolitan. In this sense, it
seems to follow the same social functionality as myth, and
since we have adopted the provisional definition of myth from
its social communicative functionality, rejecting definitions
based on transcendental categories or on the metaphorical
character of the mythic narrative, we should think that myth
and history are not so different after all.
Does history fulfil today the social function of identity
creation which in the past was accomplished by mythology
231
The five societies he considers are: Western, Christian-Orthodox,
Iranian-Syrian-Arabian, Indic and Sinic. See Arnold Toynbee. A Study of
History. Abridgement of Volumes I-X. Oxford University Press. New York
and Oxford. 1987. p.p. 11-34.
134
(religious mythology included), as Lévi-Strauss thought? 232 If

we observe the relationship between political identity and
literary and artistic myths of 19th Century Europe we obtain a
few relevant examples that will help us to give an answer to
this question. In the 19th Century, with the upsurge of Europe-
an Nationalisms, history covered to a great extent the gap that
in the construction of social identities was left by Christian
mythology after its collapse due to the subsequent develop-
ment of positive science and the triumph of the Industrial
Revolution. The revitalization of the great national poems and
the writing of new ones along the 19th Century in most of
Europe, show a relatively recent example of exclusively en-
domorphic mythologization, in which new national identities
are invented through a process of linguistic fusion of elements
of pre-Christian mythology with historical science. We ob-
serve how communities without national political identity and
without territory, like Finland, resort to the compilation of
popular legends to create with them myths about the origins,
which are inserted inside the historical thinking of the epoch,
and are manipulated with political ends. This mythology, as it
occurs in the case of Lönnrot’s Kalevala, did not need to be
read or understood in order to perform its function as original
referent for the community. The Kalevala, written in a Kareli-
an dialect which was not understood by the majority of Finns,
functioned as a symbol of mythological identity stronger than
the Bible itself, whose myths, linked to the Middle East, were
of little use to construct a different identity to that of Sweden
or Russia. In a Christian Europe, the specific difference in
national identities could only be given by pre-Christian
232
See Claude Lévi-Strauss. When Myth Becomes History. In Myth and
Meaning. Routledge. London and New York 2009. p.36.
135
myths, and for these to have ontoepistemological credibility

and be something more than simple tales of barbaric hoaxes,
it was necessary that a philosophy of mythology -such as the
Schellingian- would elevate them to signs of a wider meta-
historical scope. Even so, as the remains of these mythologies
were found buried into popular culture, where they had sur-
vived thanks to a Christianism prone to syncretism through
the figures of the saints, it was necessary to create a new con-
cept of community, of a trans-political content, applicable to
the idealized primitive communities (from which the myths
purportedly were derived) as well as to the Medieval and
modern ones, a concept that could function as the kernel of an
historical identity that, in fact, was weakly based on a com-
mon literature or a political union.
The problem of the Kalevala’s language, in another di-
mension, was applicable to Germanic myths, because the
further the regression in time the bigger the difference be-
tween the modern and the old German language, and therefore
of identities, not to mention the problems which the complete
disappearance of literature itself from an historical given mo-
ment supposed, a discontinuity in which, nonetheless, the
group’s identity was persistently maintained based on the
principles of a metaphysical essentiality of race. German
identity, as the Finnish, appealed to myths -and consequently
to language- as its foundation, an identity which was allegedly
maintained despite the superimposition of the Christian narra-
tive and the Latin language. Such kernel of identity, to which
Hegel’s concept of Volk gave a metaphysical framework
grounding it on the concept of the absolute Geist,233 finds a
233
The Volk to Hegel is the real susbstance of the absolute spirit, from
which the citizen is its consciousness. Cf. G.W.F. Hegel. Fenomenología
del Espíritu. Translated into Spanish by Wenceslao Roces. Fondo de
136
simpler and more useful definition for political praxis in the

variation that Wagner makes of it. Starting from the substanti-
ality that the Hegelian absolute spirit bestows upon the human
community, Wagner will hypostatize a Germanic linguistic
community which has lived on under different historical con-
figurations maintaining an essential identity, designated by
the concept of Volk. The Volk is a human group that acts
through a common collective desire, and whose actions are
always right and appropriate to the necessity of the moment, a
group to whom it corresponds the authorship of myths, or
more precisely, of the substance out of which the individual
poet, who communions with the Volk, will create the myths.234
Popular myths, then, express eternal truths –as Wagner will
say-235 a principle which is generally assumed by all the poets
and musicians that work with Volk elements in the European
19th Century in order to blend myth, history and nation,
whether in the mystical chants of mother Russia of Mus-
sorski’s Boris Godunov, or in the Wagnerian sacramental
dramas where the poet presents the myth as a way of knowing
through feeling, a superior form of knowledge than that of
historical knowledge.236 From this approach it is derived that
history should retreat in the face of the immediate truth that
myth entails, an epistemology of emotion in which myth pro-
vides history with the elements that the latter lacks in order to
Cultura Económica. Madrid. 1982. p.262-263. (English Edition: Hegel,

G.W.F., Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. A.V. Miller. Oxford University
234
Cf. Richard Wagner. On Music and Drama. The Greek Ideal. Trans. H.
Ashton Ellis. University of Nebraska Press. Lincoln and London. 1992.
p.p.83-92.
235
Ibid.
236
The essence of drama, Wagner will say, is to know through feeling.
Richard Wagner. Ibid. p.p. 188-189.
137
be a complete mythology, a provision made possible through

the inclusion of the popular tale into an operatic ritual. In a
first step, mythology becomes historical, it is recovered from
the popular heritage in a process of reinvention, to be inserted
in the historical chain as an original link, not in an absolute
sense, but as the origin of an specific folk, to later, mytholo-
gize history by way of the endomorphic representations of
these myths about the origin, projected over historical time,
and especially, over the present. Bourgeois art takes charge of
carrying out the process with the historical novel, as well as
with opera and theatre.237
The mythologization of history and the historization of
myth is not, however, a new process of 19th Century national-
isms. Since the beginnings of theatre in Athens, drama had
worked as a ritual in which the identity of the city was my-
thologized and recreated in a more or less critical manner,
dealing with stories of a distant past.238 Analogously, Shake-
spearian theatre mythologized in its time the history of the
kings of England inventing the Elizabethan identity, no less
than the theatre of the Maoist revolution of China will per-
form with the revolutionary dramas, whose characters are
237
Apart from Wagner’s Works, European opera (when it is something
more than operetta) places on stage the historical dramas of Schiller or
Pushkin (with the melodramatic taste of the epoch), and in the cases where
there is not an invention of a Volk identity, as in the Italian opera, political
allegories are constructed in which the fight for freedom and independence
is expressed, being these concepts understood from a nineteenth-century
bourgeois and nationalist point of view.
238
In particular, Euripides develops a critic of Athens through the tragedies
of Trojan topic, composed in a time when the city was in an imperial ex-
pansion.
138
revolutionary soldiers, peasants and workers.239 Characteristic

to the European 19th Century were the processes of identity
refoundation for those countries that already had one, and the
creation of a new one for those which had not yet achieved it,
an identity which may fit into the new political framework
defined by colonialism. Therefore, for instance, Tennyson
reuses the Arthurian myths in England as a whole purported
symbol of both British tradition and the human epic. With a
Christianism of pantheistic trait -synthesizing Celtic and Ro-
man traditions- Tennyson proposes Arthur as the symbol of
the human soul in its vital fight to maintain ethical ideals and
aspirations, with an alleged universal validity.240 The poems
of Tennyson’s Arthurian cycle, which enjoyed a great diffu-
sion and prestige in the aristocratic and bourgeois society of
Great Britain, more than an allegory of the human being, as
its author intends, show the idealization that Britain’s ruling
class had of itself as an elite which directs the fate of the
world, a self-legitimation of their right to dominate based on
the belief that their moral values are the ideal values for the
whole of humanity. In Great Britain, the concept of Volk is
unthinkable, since it contradicts the political structure of the
nation itself, formed by several people that could claim their
own separate identity.
Without the conceptual tapestry of German idealism, the
construction of the concept of Volk (or an equivalent one) is
239
The Red Lantern is one of the most notable examples of a model opera,
where the ethical patterns to adopt by the citizens are represented and a new
identity is redefined. The plot and characters which appeared in the tradi-
tional Chinese opera were changed. In The Red Lantern, a railway worker
who joins in the decade of the 30s the underground communist movement,
is recruited to fight in the war against Japan.
240
Cf. F.E.L. Priestley. Tennyson’s Idylls. In Tennyson’s Poetry. W.W.
Norton and Company. New York. 1971. p.p.634-648.
139
not such a simple thing, as it is proven by the difficulties that

the formation of the Irish identity has had. As it was seen in
the performances of the Irish national theatre founded at the
beginning of the 20th Century,241 it was easier to elaborate a
magical identity from old popular legends than to establish a
modern one with differential traits, over which, to begin with,
there was no consensus beyond a shared emotion of differ-
ence in relation to the English. And it was even more compli-
cated to establish a relation of continuity between old myths
and modern identity. Yeats had done it by linking the myths
of the Faeries to rural Ireland, which in an industrial moment
as the beginnings of the 20th Century implied the proposal of a
political pathway with a difficult way out.242
The mythopoetics of European national identities in the
20th Century, just as we observe in these examples, justifies
Leví-Strauss’ affirmation that history has inherited the social
functions of myths, and it shows something more: that in the
reflective process of historicity, the relationship between myth
and vital experience is more complex than the one which dis-
tinguishes between history as the sphere of the real and myth
as the sphere of the imaginary. It is obvious that fabulous
241
The Abbey Theatre of Dublin, founded in 1904 and which served as the
ritual stage of the Irish nationalism.
242
Unlike what happens in the German case, the continuity of identity
between the old Ireland and the modern is only achieved as an explicit
belief, just as it is laid down in relation to the people of Faery, the other
people, or the faeries, the people from yonder times, the ancient Ireland of
the druids which only presents itself to the one who believes in it. See
William Butler Yeats. Mythologies. Especially the Celtic Twilight, in the
treatment of the ideas of belief and non-belief in the supernatural world.
Collier Books. Macmillan Publishing Company. New York. 1969. And the
poem of Yeats, To Ireland in the Coming Times. The Collected Poems.
Scribner Paperback Poetry. New York. 1996. p.50-51.
140
beings like the ones appearing in ancient mythologies (be

these the anthropomorphic gods with powers worthy of the
best special effects of film industry, or the catalogues of mi-
raculous actions of prophets and messiahs of the most im-
portant religions) do not belong to daily life experience, and
can be catalogued as imaginary beings or events. Depending
on their mythological framework of reference, these beings
will either have an exomorphic representation, id est, they
will be part of a group of final (or literal) representations -
limits for conceptualization that a specific society cannot sur-
pass-, or they will be represented endomorphically, in meta-
phors expressing the full workings of a culture. But the exo-
morphical representations of such beings are not so different
from other limiting concepts that social and empirical scienc-
es handle, such as human rights, universal order, unified the-
ory of forces, big bang, plank’s era, matter, the continuum,
etc. In fact, the difference between the concepts of real and
imaginary is, to say the least, problematic, if not an operator
which does not have sense any longer for our understanding
of the world. As Heraclitus had understood, and Quine re-
peated in his ontological analyses, physical objects are postu-
lated entities that simplify the flux of our experience which
we call world, and the theories in which these appear can be
called myths.243 Thus, for example, the theoretical model that
contemporary physics entertains presents us a world as para-
doxical and contrary to ordinary experience as any of the clas-
sical myths which constituted the mockery of the scientific
community of the past. We are told of Kaluza spaces, which
contain both extended and curved dimensions, which even
243
See in particular the comments on the mythic content of physics and
mathematics in On What There Is. In From a Logical Point of View. Har-
vard University Press. Cambridge(Mass.) 1980. p.18.
141
though are not isomorphic with our experience, they are so

with the supposed structure of the cosmos, spaces which have
emerged from sheer logical speculation, without any link to
experience. We are also told, in complex theoretical schemes,
that the universe is an indivisible whole in which the parts
appear as abstractions or approximations that only have valid-
ity within the limits of classical physics’ stipulations. This
indivisible whole, as well as a Kaluza space, is an imaginary
being, an ens rationis to which no object from our ordinary
experience corresponds, like Zeus or the Cyclops.
The mythification of history that the art of the 19th Century
undertook was partially disrupted with the emergence of the
cultural industry in the 20th Century. The boom of cultural
industry runs parallel to the definite sinking of the science of
history as the causal explanation of the social actions of hu-
man communities, a place which was covered by a cluster of
partial fields that investigate the origins and developments of
different issues, unproblematically defined segments of hu-
man experience. The mythificatory functions of the old histor-
ical narratives are now divided between the industrial art of
the masses, which transforms essentialisms into cultural cli-
chés, and the academic historiography, which even though is
immersed into the inevitable epistemological discussions that
any critical narrative involves, fastens itself superstitiously to
the social chronologies as a source of meaning. Obviously,
chronologies function as an intuitive and uncritical ordering
of the past and for that reason they are still relevant as part of
the Lebenswelt. Nonetheless, chronologies produce the illu-
sion of an extra-human causality at work when their sequenc-
es of events are extrapolated beyond their local scenarios,
with the projection of a teleological thought over the general
representation of humanity’s course.
142
It is interesting to observe that this mythificatory function,

now in the hands of cultural industry, is independent of the
ontoepistemological starting point we may adopt in relation to
history. Let us take as an example the point of view of Chaos
theory that Yemina Ben-Menahem uses in his analysis of the
concepts of contingency and historical necessity. The fact that
we explain necessity and contingency as different degrees of
sensitivity to the initial conditions of the historical process,244
can offer a more or less satisfactory line of argument in rela-
tion to the predictive difficulty found in the historical field –if
the idea of some initial conditions makes sense within a do-
main in which ideological forms of causation intervene as
well-, but it does not cease to be another mechanism of my-
thologization by which experience is endomorphized in the
Lebenswelt, now with the assistance of chaos theory. Some-
thing similar would occur if we started from a deconstruction
of history, or of any other ontoepistemology, since the intui-
tion of historicity does not seem to need anything other than a
form of narrative, whichever it may be, to elaborate the social
identity. While our present-day philosophy of history strug-
gles with its theoretical issues, suffocated by its own ontoepis-
temological contradictions, the fragmented historiographical
narrative, founded over the presumed solidity of its object,
covers the economic and psychological functions for the
mythical generation of identity as the authoritative voice of
244
Cf. Yemina Ben-Menahem. Historical Contingency. p.102. Blackwell
Publishers Ltd. 1997. Oxford UK and Malden, (MA) USA. Ratio (new
series) X 2 September, 1997. Volume 10. Issue 2. p.p. 99-107. p.102. Web.
This notion of sensitivity to the initial conditions of a dynamic system could
be understood as the disagregation of the relations of the elements of a
system as time passes by. There is a more detailed definition in Edward
Lorenz, The Essence of Chaos. University of Washington Press. Seattle.
1995.
143
the media cultural industry. Historiography per se, deprived of

the philosophy of history, once it abandons the transcendental
idea of a meaning for history -in its idealist or materialist
expression- and concentrates on the empirical ordering of
chronological data with a minimum of metaphysical content
in its methods, ceases to be a positive science constructed by
the priest or the scholar, capable of outlining some general
laws of causality between the events from which normative
principles are inferred, to become merely a practical
knowledge. Because of this, it needs the media industry, a
mutual dependence which is particularly intense in the sphere
of socio-political news by which public opinion is formed.
The social actors are the productive forces, and social repre-
sentation, not predetermined in ille tempore, is conditioned by
the shifting and open relations of experience. Such relations
are intelligible and expressible, but not exclusively in terms of
historiographical science. In particular, the generation of
meaning for the present and the future which corresponded to
the old historicist narrative is transferred to art, especially to
the action of the avant-garde art. Thus, cultural industry has
incorporated the avant-gardes, heirs of mythological utopic
thought, as part of the social machinery that invents future
and sense for the masses to which it addresses, generating a
global cosmopolitan capitalist identity. The mythologization
of the avant-gardes is erected over a self-proclamation of the
artistic genius, inheritor of the Kantian tradition, as a prophet
of the sensibility of the future, as oracle and architect of the
community’s psyche, in which history can be written in the
present because it is anticipated and programmed in plans of
the sensibility, which are part of the general industrial and
economical schemas for the community’s life.
144
Media cultural industry covers today, within globalized

societies, the mythico-ritual domain which at the time was
conducted by ecclesiastic and state powers. The media narra-
tive brings together the social dimension of the myth as a
model of enculturation (didactic and of entertainment), and
the psychological dimension for the generation of the com-
munity’s identity. Following the instructions of the great na-
tional and imperial religions, the media rewrite the most dis-
tant past in stereotyped clichés of enculturation which deline-
ate an uncritical and ghostly identity, at the same time that
glorify their own activity, and write the future, planning the
self-fulfilled prophecies of the infallible genius of the artistic
and scientific modernity that animates them, around which the
mass economic production that moves society agglutinates as
the new mythico-ritual representation. The engine is the Best-
seller product, not only the literary, but any industrial mer-
chandise that sells well and can be incorporated into the narra-
tives of fashion, the narcissistic self-indulgence disciplined by
the uniformity of the stereotype, the social icon object of cult,
unambiguous in its meanings, since its referent is the system
of media culture itself that generates meaning for the social
group in an integrated show. The Bestseller, divulgated and
manufactured by the media industry, gives the content for the
canonic myth, which unceasingly repeats an axiology of in-
dustrial consumption that holds society together with the same
solidity as in their time did the transmundane values of archa-
ic mythologies.245
245
The process has been in its heyday for at least seventy years. It is inter-
esting to observe such continuity since the comments that Adorno and
Horkheimer made at the beginning of the 40s in relation to literary bestsell-
ers and screenplays of Los Angeles’ film industry. A criterion which now
has a global scope and is not limited to the cinema. See Theodor Adorno
145
Not only the historical narrative fulfills the functions of

myths, but philosophy of history itself is a mythologizing
action, by way of generating proposals about the whole of
historical thought, and by undertaking an investigation on the
origins. That these narratives of philosophy of history, Schel-
ling’s, Marx’s, Toynbee’s, or any other, may be considered
myths, or not, is a secondary determination concerning the
fact that all of them have produced narratives of social identi-
ty, and some have even been generators of structures of social
order which have conditioned economic actions and ways of
life, in an analogous manner as it had been done by traditional
myths.
and Max Horkheimer, The Culture Industry: Enlightment and Mass Decep-
tion, in Dialectic of Enlightment. Verso. London 1983. p. p.120-167.
146
CHAPTER 4
Mimesis
4.1 Mimesis and Causality
Archaic myths have come down to us in poetic form,

whether through the elaborated metric compositions found in
mature languages, firmly established in the art of writing, or
through more simple and direct oral tales. Thus, it cannot
come as a surprise that the most common conception concern-
ing the content and functionality of myth is literary. Scientific
ontoepistemologies, as well as those of great religions, have
allowed little room for myth to be anything else, and so they
have zealously restricted its domain since the beginnings of
modern science in the Western world, relegating myth to the
field of art, as if by declaring fantastic the tales of the past, the
modern ones were made more real, and by endomorphizing in
the aesthetic plane the old exomorphic representations, the
similarities and the metaphysical legacy of science in relation
to myth were placed under a spell by means of the creation of
an artistic game. Nonetheless, the relation of myth to the fig-
147
CHAPTER 4: Mimesis
ure of the poet takes us into an anthropological dimension of

the mythic domain which is indispensable for its understand-
ing: its composition, which conditions a communicative struc-
ture, inasmuch as it contains information relevant to the
group’s survival, will hierarchically determine the social or-
der. The shaman-poet, as mediator with the world of the gods,
is the reference that could allow us to understand the deeply
human content of the inspiration that has produced myth, but
also the comprehension of the cognitive hierarchies that lead
to specialization, the power that is derived from the effective
control of memory and the symbolization of daily life eco-
nomic activities.
Not all myths are the work of a single man. The case of
Moses, Vyasa, Valmiki, Virgil, Snorri Sturluson, Elias Lö-
nnrot, and other poets to whom the authorship is attributed,
or, at least, the writing of a myth, are not the most common
case when we deal with ancient tales. Additionally, when we
have human authorship, the composers are always considered
something more than mere mortals. The Rigveda was com-
posed by a group of Rishis no less legendary than Indra or the
Maruts, and all kinds of supernatural beings hold authorship
for the foundational books of the different mythologies: The
Holy Spirit inspired the Gospel, God revealed the Koran to
Mohammed. Even when there is a human name the identity of
the poet is misty, as in the case of Homer, whose persona is
more a literary conjecture than an actual single man. From a
mythic point of view, the individual authorship can even be
non-existent or irrelevant. In some traditions, the tales about
the origins belong to the entire community and have been
orally transmitted without other proper names than the ones of
the ancestors and gods appearing in the tale. We can attribute
this phenomenon to the divine condition that is bestowed
148
upon the singer -an instrument at the service of the god who
speaks through him. From less supernatural premises, the
authorship of myth corresponds to the group who developed
the linguistic expressive means in which a particular
worldview is established, but allow me to continue with the
consideration of the Divine communication as an endomor-
phic representation of a wider epistemological phenomenon.
That a particular individual may make use of a poetic heritage
and may give aesthetic shape to the old tales of the tribe and
social memories, is not as relevant from the anthropological
viewpoint as the fact that in such formalisms there is an im-
print of the entire emotional life of the group, the basic valua-
tions which constitute their identity traits. If we take as an
example the authorship of the Mahabharata, we can see that
the text was recited by the bard Ugrasravas, who produced it
as he heard it from Vaisampayana, who in turn learned it from
his master Krishna Dvaipayana, known as Vyasa, who recited
it in front of king Janamejaya when requested about the origin
of the dispute between Kauravas and Pandavas. Authorship
was therefore dissolved into three successive generations of
visionary poets, the Rishis, instruments of the Divinity, or
even in some cases, avatars of the very same gods, who
transmit knowledge to mortals. In other traditions, the proph-
ets gather the texts that the angels recite to them, or the in-
spired rhapsodists give voice to the Muse, or the shaman,
dancing with his drum, begins the ecstatic voyage and has a
conversation with the gods obtaining wisdom through this
adventure. In all these cases, we assist to a characteristic form
of relation between the singer-poet of the myth and the super-
natural power from which it emanates, an epistemological
phenomenon which has been traditionally called mimesis.
Above, I have used this concept after its most general concep-
149
CHAPTER 4: Mimesis
tion, as a kind of imitation, when dealing with the diverse old

philosophical theories that tackled the problem of language
origin. The relevance of the term in the mythic domain, as a
tool for the thinking of such problematic relationships as the
one between object and word, or that of inspiration, or, as we
shall see right away, magical causation, demands an addition-
al philological clarification.
The classical notion of mimesis has an ample semantic
field denoting diverse activities: imitation, representation,
reproduction, sameness, identification, simulation, mime,
analogy, although it is as well related to presentation, witness-
ing, production, appropriation, the original, the model and the
authentic.246 The word mimesis is post-Homeric and its ety-
mology is obscure, 247 albeit, mimesthai began denoting the
mime or the mimicry of a person or animal by means of the
voice and/or gesture, to later denote the general imitation of
another person, and from there, passed on to the figurative
arts, to later, in a more general sphere, designate any activity
of visual representation, paintings, statues and the like.248 The
term mimesis does not appear defined in the classical world. It
is a concept linked to the religious realm that expresses a
246
Mihai Spariosu. Literature, Mimesis and Play: Essays in Literary Theo-
ry. Ed. Gunter Narr, Tubingen 1982. P. 54.
247
Cf. Wladislaw Tatarkiewicz. Historia de seis ideas. Capt.9:Mímesis. Ed
Tecnos. Madrid 1988.p.301. (English Edition: Tatarkiewicz, Wladislaw, A
History of Six Ideas: An Essay in Aesthetics. Trans. Christopher Kasparek.
Melbourne International Philosophy Series Volume 5. Polish Scientific
Publishers. The Hague/ Boston/ London. 1980.)
248
Cf. Gerard F. Else. Imitation in the Fifth Century. Harvard Studies in
Classical Philology 53, No. 2. Harvard.Massachussets. 1958. p. 84 . See
from the same author: Aristotle on the Beauty of Tragedy in Harvard Stud-
ies in Calssical Philology Vol. 49. A similar notion of mimesis is found in
Sörbom Göram: Mimesis and Art: Studies in the Origin and Early Develp-
ment of an Aesthetic Vocabulary. Stockholm: Svenska Bokförlaget 1966.
150
complex form of relation with the supernatural domain. Alt-

hough it probably had its origin within the Greek shamanistic
tradition, which extends at least from Orpheus249 to Pythago-
ras,250 its influence reaches up to classical philosophy. Plato
as well as Aristotle used the concept to deal with themes of
inspiration, as well as with epistemological basic relations
between world and language, as we have already seen when
treating the origin of the latter. In its Pythagorean epistemo-
logical dimension, mimesis is linked to the ideal proportions,
and together with them, to music and mathematics,251 and we
could say that in the concept underlies a general intuition of
the notion of harmony or mediation between two categories,
that is, the intuition that corresponds to the concept of
morphism, although understood as a vital process of media-
tion.
Within the context of myths, the narrative action is mimet-
ic in both ways: the narrator determines the objects and sce-
narios of the narrative, but the narrative, as long as it is inte-
grated in the individual and social memory, will condition the
subject and the group in order to form their identity. The hu-
249
Orpheus’s Apollonian filiation is given by Pindar: Píndaro. Pítica IV. In
Poesía. Ed. Gredos. Madrid.1984. p.170. (English Edition: Pindar’s Poetry.
Harvard University Press and William Heinemann. Cambridge (Mass.) and
London. 1978.)
In Orpheus, some of the characteristics of a good shaman can be observed:
his healing abilities, his spells and his divinatory power, his civilizing bene-
ficial influence in the different Greek cities.
250
Pythagoras’s filiation with Apollo is abundant. See Iambic. Life of Py-
thagoras. In The Pythagorean Sourcebook op. cit. p. 58. Porphyry also
acknowledges this Apollonian filiation (Cf. Porphyry. Life of Pythagoras.
In The Pythagorean Sourcebook. Ed. Cit. p.123.)
251
See Plato’s Pythagorean conception in Laws (667e-668a), when he
sustains that the mimesis takes place due to the relation between things
according to their quantity and quality.
151
CHAPTER 4: Mimesis
man being creates the mythological worlds, but at the same

time, within those worlds the creation of human and cosmos
is described, and the tale returns differed and objectified, as
something external which produces identity determinations.
In these mimetic actions, the first concepts of causality are
formed, as Durkheim observed from the study of the different
cults of the Australian tribes. The imitation is not only of spe-
cific objects and actions, instead, complete scenarios are imi-
tated following the principle of causality at work in sympa-
thetic magic.252 Following Frazer’s characterization, we could
say that this principle of causality is twofold. On the one
hand, it maintains the conviction that what affects an object,
affects in a solidary manner all which is in contact with it, and
on the other hand, that the similar generates the similar.253 In
this solidarity principle, the space-time coexistence of objects,
persons and actions implies their indivisible synthetic unity,
in such a way that what affects an element affects the whole
system as well. On the other hand, the sameness principle is
based on the belief in a link that objects, subjects and actions
have when they do not share the same space-time, but do
share a similar form, and due to the mere fact of having such a
similarity. This last principle sustains as well that the genera-
tion of things is made from similarities -which implies a plu-
rality of original elements- out of which the different things
emerge.
252
See Emile Durkheim. Las formas elementales de la vida religiosa. Book
III. Chapter 3. (English Edition: Durkheim, Emile. The Elementary Forms
of Religious Life. Translated by Karen E. Fields. The Free Press. New York.
1995.)
253
Frazer called them law of contact or contagion and law of similarity or
homeopathy. Cf. James Frazer. The Golden Bough. Ed. Cit. p.p.12-13.
152
The system of magical causation links the heterogeneous

elements of a scenario by mere spatiotemporal simultaneity,
and transfers the elements of a scenario into another with
similar shapes or a common property independently of its
spatiotemporality. An action upon one element of the hetero-
geneous scenario affects the whole scenario, while an action
among homogeneous elements in relation to a property is not
necessarily locally produced. If we combine both principles, a
curious phenomenon happens: one can affect something at a
distance by the principle of sameness, and if that thing be-
longs to a scenario, the action will also affect the whole sce-
nario, and all similar scenarios, but since sameness is within
this sphere a vague concept based on perceptions, a causal
chain would be produced that would cover, in fact, the majori-
ty of the spatiotemporal scenarios that the magician in ques-
tion could think of. We find an example in those cases where
the god or goddess is associated to the moon. Magical causali-
ty will produce the binding of all round shapes to the Di-
vine,254 but also, all the horn-like shapes that correspond to
the waxing and waning of our satellite’s visual perception will
be associated to that Divine figure, and by extension, to ani-
mals with horns, together with their corresponding objects
and scenarios. 255 What is more, insofar as by thinking of
something I form a representation of that object in my mind, I
could manipulate that object and all objects similar to it. It is,
then, a question of formal causation -whether it may be given
by the space-time structure or by the structure of the object,
subject or action-, and in fact, of a very general formal causa-
tion, since the form can be given by the perception of the
254
As Pythagoreans will do.
255
Consider, for instance, the bull and the horn shape on Minoan mytholo-
gy.
153
CHAPTER 4: Mimesis
object as well as by the object’s concept, or by the mere expe-

rience of perceptive simultaneity, even though this perceptive
experience will not be possible without the formal character
of the conceptualizing action, which determines objects by
means of the synthesis of selective representations.
Within the anthropological sphere of the ritual, the princi-
ples of magical causation stay clearly expressed by the imita-
tion of animals and divinities that are performed in shamanic
ceremonies (understanding shamanic in a general sense. 256 )
The age of these myths reaches at least to the period of the
Paleolithic hunters. According to Horst Kirchner’s interpreta-
tion of the Lascaux reliefs, ceremonies of shamanic trance
were performed inside the cave,257 a fact which implies that -
256
Eliade, in his classical study on shamanism (Shamanism: Ancient Tech-
niques of Ecstasy. Princeton University Press. Princeton.1974.p.p. 3-4.),
distinguished the term shaman from that of sorcerer, magician, medicine-
man, used to designate a person common in archaic societies who had
magical-religious powers. Shamanism, in a strict sense, is a religious phe-
nomenon of Siberia and Central Asia, in fact, the origin of the word is
Tungu, but it is precisely this general content, of a person who is in charge
of the religious actions of the primitive tribe, what justifies the wide use the
word shaman regardless of its specific particularization in some actions.
Such particular ritual actions give the specific difference of the tribe, their
unique traits of identity expressed in numerous details, but not the differ-
ence of the shaman person, whose performances show a common social
action that corresponds to different human groups. I would include the
animist ceremonies, besides the ceremonies of ascension to the sky or de-
scent to the underworld of Asia’s Turk-Mongol tribes.
257
Ibid.p.503. One the first forms of imitation that we can think of is the
appropriation or possession of the spirit of a totemic animal, a divine ani-
mal. From the representations that we find of these animals in rock caves,
the importance of the presentation of their image can be deduced, or the
appropriation of their spirit, for their subsequent knowledge and control
among the primitive people. For the relation between music and magic in
the Paleolithic see the study of Jules Combarieu, La Musique et la Magie.
Alphonse Picard et Fils Editeurs. Paris 1909.p.130.
154
if we take into account that rites of this kind are still per-
formed at present times- the shamanic mimesis has been the
most important ritual form of the Homo sapiens up to date.
Within those ceremonies, the mimesis functioned as the link
between the world of the ancestors and the gods with the
world of the tribe’s social reality. Mimesis allowed to witness
the imaginary world of divine representations that the shaman
formed in his mind, through dance, movement and tales, a
world that he communicated from his state of trance, with
more or less clarity, to the rest of the group in mythico-ritual
ceremonies. Mircea Eliade noticed that these mimetic tales of
the shaman, in his ecstatic descents to the underworld and
ascents to the heavens, suggest the adventures of the figures
of popular tales and the heroes of epic literature, and that,
probably, most of the mythic motifs had their origin in this
kind of ceremony.258 Rites endomorphize in representational
protocols the literal referents of the group, which in the most
archaic societies always take the form of the ancestors and/or
diverse supernatural beings with an influence over the natural
world. In this limit, the subject and its representation, the
shaman and the Divinity, form a double identity, inseparable,
a multiple personality that can be segregated into other two
different ones, by means of the objectification of the words
and gestures of the shaman which have been assigned to the
god or the spirits. The double entity of the shaman is the one
that allows the transformation of the final representation of
258
Cf. Mircea Eliade. Shamanism: Ancient Techniques of Ecstasy. Prince-
ton University Press. Princeton. 1974. p.510. However, Eliade’s hypothesis
would not explain the origin of the mithologems that are directly character-
istic of the city, nor the Neolithic mythologies, but it does offer a scenario
for the creation of myths within an ecstatic social ritual from which these
other subsequent motives could have been derived.
155
CHAPTER 4: Mimesis
the god into an allegorical representation, endomorphized in

the very same ceremony. The god is endomorphized with the
ritual representation and the narrative, which, in typical sha-
manic ceremonies of ascent to the heavens or descent to the
underworld, includes some moment in which the spirits, an-
cestors and gods speak through the officiator, and they do so
using already the representations that constitute the collective
language, in the metaphors that form part of the Lebenswelt’s
heritage.
Gods and myths, although they socially operate in the Le-
benswelt, have not been elaborated only from ordinary expe-
rience, but after a more borderline and liminal zone of the
human psyche. The data gathered by anthropology shows that
the human being has spoken with the ancestors and the gods
in psychological states which are different from the ones we
call of wakefulness.259 The ancestor, or god, appears in a psy-
chological state of daydream, or something equivalent (in-
duced by drugs or an illness), and the shamanic ceremonies
reproduce these similar states in which such a communication
is viable. The separation of the natural world in relation to the
supernatural is, ab initio, a communicative question. Besides
the alteration of ordinary experience by the mere fact of the
ritual practice that interrupts current occupations, the group
and the officiator can take, at specific moments, different
hallucinogenic drugs. In many other cases, the shamans and
officiators have their consciousness altered by different forms
of illness, epilepsy, hysteria, digestive disorders, vertigo,
etc., 260 which produce a change in perception and in their
259
By psychological states I understand the different modes of brain func-
tion that correspond to different forms of electromagnetic waves.
260
As it has been emphasized for a long time in anthropological research.
See Eliade. Ibid. p.p.23-30.
156
reasoning processes. The experience of the psychological

limit is not exclusive of the poet nor of the ritual experience,
since it forms part of daily life, both in the oneiric dimension,
and in the physiological and cognitive alterations that are
produced when facing the brutality of survival, pain, the con-
tinuous tearing of the personality, or in the experience of eu-
phoria and ecstatic joy as well. Social liminality is any state of
disorder of a group due to human internal or external conflicts
or to natural actions. The social order inhibits the full satisfac-
tion of the individual’s basic emotions, but at the same time
provides a measure of finitude and security which is lost at
moments of liminal action. Social liminality takes place in
scenarios of illness or desperation, of death and suicide, or
when for some reason the well-defined normative social ties
are broken, implying anomia, alienation and angst.261 It is not
the only state of a society, nor the most frequent one, but it is
in the condition of liminality when the appropriate scene for
the emergence of fundamental values takes place, or for the
most violent skepticisms concerning the values of the past. In
a liminal situation, the emotions and rational capabilities of a
community trigger and cross their different pulses, producing
a general convulsion, more or less strong, of all its values.
Liminality is endomorphized through ritual. Rites condense,
focalize and give meaning to those experiences, intensifying
them dramatically and objectifying them by turning them into
a representation. The poet-shaman stages the myths in front of
261
To which Turner called the three fatal alpha sisters of many modern
myths (Cf. Victor Turner. From Ritual to Theatre. P.A.J. New York. 1992. p.
46.). See specifically the analysis he makes in relation to the social dramas
that take place during conflicting situations. Turner defines a cyclical pattern
for social dramas that consists of, disruption of order, crisis, action redi-
rected to solve the problem, and, finally, reintegration.
157
CHAPTER 4: Mimesis
his community, within a sacred space whose topography con-

tains the liminal at the center, as an uncertainty to be ceremo-
nially conjured. In fact, the social order is always found pre-
cariously superposed over the limen. The mythico-ritual ac-
tion incorporates and channels the liminal content of the vital
experience, which is interpreted from the order that the ritual
entails, in which the origin of the world is reinstated and rep-
resented again, something which requires, for a lapse of time,
the generation of a controlled anomic state. The liminal ano-
mia is controlled at a social level by means of substitutive
representations or liminoid simulations that rechannel danger
in a rational manner towards well defined and mechanically
reproducible scenarios.
The sphere of myth covers both the liminal and the limi-
noid, since it needs the ritual in order to settle its axiological
contents. In fact, its ability to generate social identity and
sense resides in its capability to transform actions into reflec-
tions without losing the cathartic intensity of the emotion. An
example of this is given in Greek tragedy, whose structure of
mythification has served as a model to the rituals of contem-
porary mediatic societies. Tragedy is the ritual of a complex
and sophisticated form of religion in which the poet, by
means of a dramatic action, formulates a point of moral equi-
librium for a democratic citizenship community prone to tear-
ing into individualities and psychological particularizations.
The objectives of social cohesion cannot be attained through a
negative way alone: myth is actively educational, and for it to
be so, its reflective component has to be unambiguous, the
representations of order must build an axiological model, for
which, its contents must be part of the Lebenswelt, and the
community has to be present not only as audience, but as an
active participative choir, in which the basic emotions that
158
take place in the liminal experience may be endomorphized

by way of moral representations.
4.2 Liminal Mimesis
Mythico-ritual liminality, whose origin is found in the

intensity of the communal vital experience of survival, gener-
ates an epistemological framework of magical causality in
which is inscribed a psychology of inspiration, closely linked
to such a causality. In relation to the poet-shaman officiator,
this liminality has been studied by philosophy since Plato. In
order to name the poet’s rapture and communicate the nature
of the possession, Plato used three different terms: entheos
(enthusiast), katechomenos (possessed) or mainomenos (de-
mented), all of which connote a form of madness, although
not necessarily with the pathological content that we give to
the last term today. In Platonic terms, the poet, is a light,
winged and sacred figure who establishes the first link that
unites his community with the Divine, someone who is not in
a condition to perform his work until he is outside of him-
self.262 Such schizophrenic split presents some problems from
262
Cf. Plato. Ion. 533b-534 b. In the Phaedrus (265 B), Plato distinguishes
two types of trance or possession (manía): one that emerges from the differ-
ent states of human illness, and another one that comes from a divine state
which liberates us from our everyday life habits. Afterwards he divides this
second state into four classes of manía or trance, each one consistent of a
possession by a different divinity. Thus, we have the divinatory or mantic
manía that corresponds to Apollo, the mystical or telestic, which is that of
Dionysus, the poetic, which is the one inspired by the Muses, and lastly, the
madness of love (the most sublime, according to Socrates), produced by
Aphrodite and Eros. All these forms of divine madness have the effect of
159
CHAPTER 4: Mimesis
the viewpoint of the epistemological praxis. If the poet is

completely demented, how is he capable of remembering
what he has said and of transmitting it through writing? Or,
how is he capable of writing something meaningful from a
state of ecstasy? Not all psychological states of ecstasy are the
same, and the differences are in a direct relationship to the
actual remembrance that the officiator has of his actions and
narrations.263 Whether the shaman loses consciousness com-
pletely, or maintains it and expresses a multiple personality,
the question is reduced to a communicative problem. If the
officiator becomes demented up to the point of losing the
psychological identity prior to the rite -whether by fainting or
simply entering into a catatonic state-, the interpretation of
what is taking place will have to be carried out, either by the
producing a state of derangement in the affected person, an unsoundness of

mind. If Apollo’s madness, which allows the foreseeing of the future gives
birth to a form of knowledge that will lead to science, the madness of the
Muses originates the arts, that of Dionysus, the impulse towards self-
knowledge, and Aphrodite’s madness the emotion of love.
263
The studies of Gilbert Rouget about the nature of trance in relation to the
officiators of the shamanic ceremony are relevant to what we are dealing
with. Rouget analyzed the function of the musicians in the rituals: As far as
musicians are concerned, things are relatively simple: they do not, in prin-
ciple, go into trance. Indeed, to do so would be incompatible with their
function, which is to provide for hours on end and sometimes on several
consecutive days, music whose execution must continuously adapt to the
circumstances. It is therefore important that they should be constantly
available and at the service of the ritual. This is probably the reason why
these musicians frequently are not adepts themselves. Since they have never
been possessed, there is no fear that they will enter into trance. Paradoxi-
cally, then, these musicians, who seem to be the very pillars of possession
séances and without whom possession dance would be inconceivable, are in
a way external to the cult. (Gilbert Rouget. Music and trance. Trans. Brun-
hilde Biebnyck and author. University of Chicago Press. Chicago.
1985.p.p.103-104).
160
4.2 Liminal Mimesis
group, or by another officiator. In small communities the in-

terpretation of signs that the group performs is sufficient,
because there is a common heritage, a Lebenswelt that makes
communication possible, and the interpretation does not re-
quire any other mediators. However, in more socially diversi-
fied communities, in which the individuals do not form a an
existential community in the sense of Turner, 264 a mediator
who can interpret the possession becomes indispensable, as it
happened, for example, in Greek oracles, where the priests did
not only interpret the more or less coherent signs of the Sibyl,
but also wrote them down for a possible future use at another
interpretative session. 265 In urban societies, with a complex
normative social structure, the communication with the gods -
always liminal-, must be priestly mediated in order to avoid
the anomy of the action, a fact that entails a separation into
two ritual persons, one ecstatic, of altered consciousness, and
another that interprets the sings and is in control of the cere-
mony. Such action exemplifies the process of mythologiza-
tion: the Sibyl produces, in her ecstasy, the exomorphisms
that are rendered familiar by the priests in their endomorphic
chains of signs. We could name this form of liminal mimesis
oracular or priestly, and, unlike the shamanic -in which a sin-
gle person integrated the other two-, is inseparably linked to
the art of writing.
264
In an existential communitas, as different from the normative communitas
of urban societies, the relationships between individuals are direct and without
mediation, and a complete confrontation of human identities is produced,
frequently of an ephemeral duration, of the kind I-and-Thou of Martin Buber,
or the Essential We. See Victor Turner. From Ritual to Theatre. Ed.Cit. p.45.
265
See Walter Burkert, Greek Religion. Trans. Jonh Raffan. Harvard Uni-
versity Press. Cambridge, Masssachusetts. 1994. p.117.
161
CHAPTER 4: Mimesis
The writing of the oracular mimesis made the states of

possession independent in relation to the questions and an-
swers from which they arose. The possibility of using the
same signs in other occasions implies the belief that their
epistemological content has a general use, for the Divinity’s
prophecies are taken as immutable laws, and there is an at-
tempt to fix them (in prescientific spheres) into mottos, apho-
risms and proverbs. But on the other hand, the fact that the
same answer may serve for questions of different persons
implies that there is a set of repetitive patterns in human ac-
tions and those of the universe and the gods. The oracular
dynamics is clearly exemplified in the I Ching, or Book of
Changes. The book is a compilation of sixty four possible
oracular combinations already unbound from their original
question. The combinations are the result of eight nuclear
signs with three overlapped levels of semanticity,266 to which
are added the interpretations of the combinations of the sings
given by various -more or less mythical- characters. As we
might expect from such a work, the authorship of the book is
multiple and its composition fabulous, as in other cases of
mythological literature.267 The reading of the oracle is a ritual
266
An abstract one, defined after heterogeneous concepts such as creation,
the abyssal, the adherent, etc., which in general counterpoint movement and
stillness, and serve to generate contexts of scenarios. Another that uses
relations between elements, water, fire, wood, etc., which serve to represent
forms of intuition, very basic and general, in relation to actions and objects,
transferring properties of these elements into others, by means of cognitive
processes of magical causality. And finally, an interpretation based on
social family bonds.
267
It is attributed to Fu Hi, to king Wen, to the duke of Chou and to Confu-
cius. Fu Hi is a civilizing ancestor, who teaches how to hunt, fish, and cook
nourishment, besides creating the signs of the book, therefore we could be
talking about shamanic origins. See the introduction to the book of Richard
Wilhelm, I Ching. Translated from German by D.J. Vogelman. Edhasa.
162
4.2 Liminal Mimesis
in which chance is used by means of a protocolized process of

manipulation of stalks, or alternatively, by the throwing of
coins. Chance is interpreted as the will of Heaven, which
gives the adequate answer to the question that has been spe-
cifically formulated. In fact, within this system, chance is
interpreted as the positioning of the person who consults the
oracle in relation to an extra-human system of order perfectly
enclosed in a great cycle of change. Here the oracular voice
spoke in ille tempore, in a perfectly objectivized message,
both in the book as well as in the productive system of inter-
pretations to which the text belongs, a metatext that is a gen-
erator of tales of interpretation from the combinatory creation
of textual segments. The mimetic objectifying of the shaman
and later of the Sibyl, was corporeal and presential, whereas
now, in the oracular text, the objectification is no longer per-
sonified, but reified, producing a stronger objectification. The
oracular written mimesis becomes impersonal, independent of
a human will: the ancestors and the sky-god speak to us on
their own, and the mediator is, thanks to writing, an institu-
tion, formed by the different generations of priests that have
elaborated such a complex game. In a sense, the institutional
and multiple mediator has become invisible, and the narrator
belongs now to the objectified process of the message.
Historically, shamanic and oracular mimetic models have
been associated with ontotheological determinations of expe-
rience. Plato’s philosophical system supposes a more elabo-
rated and mature version of those archaic ontotheologies.
Platonic forms, like Pythagorean numbers, are abstract objec-
tified divinities, formal laws that contain the natural beings as
Barcelona. 1994. (English Edition: Wilhelm, Richard, The I Ching or Book

of Changes. Trans. C.F. Baynes. Bollingen Series XIX. Princeton Universi-
ty Press. Princeton, NJ. 1997.)
163
CHAPTER 4: Mimesis
particularizations of them. 268 The poet and the philosopher

have knowledge to the extent that they participate in these
forms, for only from them the signs that are shown to us in the
appearances can have any sense. In Plato, no less than in the
case of the impersonal oracular mimesis, the meaning of hu-
man experience is placed in the supernatural ideas -final ref-
erents for what we are-, implying that there is a celestial
mind, from which ours is nothing but an example. The wise
man, the city’s guardian -Plato will say-, is the one who
knows the preliminary sciences, and how these are linked to
music (a knowledge that he will apply to legal and moral be-
havior), besides being versed in questions concerning the
immortality of the soul and the existence of a celestial mind,
in which all things are contained.269 The old oracles are now
interiorized in the human mind participant in the order of the
universe through the eidetic or formal mimesis. The
knowledge is accessible to poets in a direct and spontaneous
way, but also to anybody who, through the use of reason,
questions the causes and foundations of things.
Both the ontological and the epistemological weights of
the formal mimesis are on the side of the supernatural: to
know is to remember what was already known and was for-
gotten through the contact with existence, as we read in the
Phaedo. The mimetic dependence has been inverted in rela-
tion to the shamanic mimesis: the officiating multi-personality
now corresponds to the supernatural being, in the sense that it
contains all natural actors as its reflections, although just like
in the oracular mimesis, all these actors are but incomplete
signs that obtain their meaning and ontic status from the di-
268
Plato. Parmenides, 132D.
269
Cf. Plato. Laws.967.d-e.
164
4.2 Liminal Mimesis
vine form. This formal mimesis is the one encountered also in

the Vedanta doctrines, in which a sole principle, Atman-
Brahman, is manifested in the manifold of life forms, a
knowledge that is, in this case, also obtained by logos, alt-
hough not through geometrical reasoning but through an in-
vestigation (Atman Vichara) aimed at removing the veils (in
the manner of the Greek truth) from the true nature of the
self’s unity.270
From a psychological point of view, shamanic mimesis as
well as oracular mimesis (personal or impersonal) -as differ-
ing from philosophical formal mimesis-, are produced under
different circumstances to those of ordinary experience, for
they take place in a ritual environment of altered conscious-
ness. Even in Platonic formalism, far from the sphere of sober
reasoning, there is a direct appeal to the consciousness of the
Divine when philosophizing, a proposal that takes away the
philosophical discourse from what would be a political and
pragmatic personal conscience to enter into the
of an a priori knowledge of the forms. In this sense, all these
forms of mimesis can be thought under the same ontoepiste-
mological framework composed by natural and supernatural
beings who live in contiguous worlds and relate to each other
mimetically. The existence of both worlds is objective, and
human contact with the supernatural world occurs under con-
ditions of liminal psychological experience, mediated by spe-
cialists. To Plato the signs are the celestial ones, and the expe-
rience of the limit is produced by the astronomical thought.
When he speaks of the stars as beings with a soul and of the
cosmos as a living being gifted with the perfection of the
270
See the texts of Sankara, especially the Vivekachundamani. Translation
of Arthur Osborne from the one that Ramana Maharshi made into tamil, in
The Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi. Weiser Books. Boston. 1972.
165
CHAPTER 4: Mimesis
sphere,271 he is establishing exomorphisms not so different to

the Egyptian ones of the eye of Ra. To Plato, the gods and
their myths are allegories of the celestial objects -Zeus is the
firmament, Apollo, the sun, Demeter, the Earth, etc.-, howev-
er, the celestial bodies and the orbs as such are not allegories
of anything else, but divine beings that have a literal existence
according to literal universal laws. The cosmos is composed
of two parts, the celestial sphere of unchanging and perfect
orbs, in which the substance is ether, and the sub-lunar mun-
dane sphere of the four elements, in which the imperfection of
vital experience takes place. In this theoretical framework, the
human liminal experience, individual and social, occurs be-
cause of the mental participation (through the no s) in the
etheric and formal intellectual order. Participation is not pos-
sible from ordinary experience (because through it we only
have access to appearances), but from an entheos, a participa-
tion in the Divinity in which our mind is united with the cos-
mic mind, in a liminal experience of forms or ideas. To Plato,
the incompleteness of the natural sign, in contrast to previous
liminal traditions (shamanic and oracular), is not founded
simply on its ontic debt to transcendental ideas, but has also
an explicit linguistic character, for only the purely logico-
geometrical signs, apprehended through discourse, 272 unveil
the truth. The continuity of the supernatural world in relation
to that of nature, the proximity and immediacy of the world of
the ancestors that can be observed in archaic cultures, is sub-
stituted in the formal mimesis by the rupture between the
spheres of the ideal and the mundane already initiated by the
Pythagoreans. In cultures linked to a sacred book, the distance
271
As he does in the Timeus.
272
See what the Parmenides says. 135.f.
166
4.2 Liminal Mimesis
between the two realms is covered by the postulate (more or

less explicit) of a morphism of the infinitude that links the
natural to the supernatural, the perfection of the divine
spheres to the imperfection of human actions and knowledge.
We find examples in the Babylonian myths or in those of the
great Ganges kingdoms of the final Vedic period (600 B.Z.)
when the Brahmanas arise (which interpret the Veda from the
point of view of the sacrifices and ritual order), or with the
Zoroastrian Avesta of the Achaemenid Empire, or with the
Talmud, or the Bible, all of them already linked to stratified
urban social structures in which a priestly caste administers
knowledge and economic life. The sacred scriptures have
been composed by the Divinity and materialized through in-
termediaries, and it is precisely this authorship what confers
them the character of a definitive and unquestionable mimetic
model, since nothing in them is placed at random, each sign
manifesting the order of the divine acts. The participation of
the human in the mundane is filtered by a powerful principle
of servitude, or rather, of authority. Supernatural mimesis
defines a hierarchic social structure based upon the ontologi-
cal supremacy of the world of the gods which is translated
into the priestly supremacy in order to determine the commu-
nity’s order. The technical specialization required in the work
of the shaman is accentuated when such a technique is trans-
lated into the structure of thought itself. This technique of
control over symbolic languages –whether it is the oracular
language of the hexagrams, that of Greek philosophical logic
or the analytic metaphysical distinctions of the philosophy of
Hindu Samkya-, already expresses an ontological difference
between the supernatural and the natural, the lack of immedi-
acy and spontaneity in the contact with the supernatural world
in which the foundations for nature and human existence have
167
CHAPTER 4: Mimesis
been placed. Mimesis, understood as ratio, is accompanied by

an authority principle, to the extent that both concepts demand
a joint explanation: reason, or ratio, or mimesis, is the act of
determination of the world performed by the authority, the
single valid interpreter of the divine designs and the propor-
tions that relate both worlds. On the other hand, the authority
is the depository persona of the ratio, and it will be so as long
as knows the ratio and acts from it.273 The ratio of modern
science will dissolve Medieval auctoritas to institute in its
place the authority of a new ratio, in which empirical ele-
ments are incorporated, bringing a mise en scène of the forces
of the universe within a liminoid schema.
As mythico-ritual ceremonies of the liminal mimetic tradi-
tion show, the anomic content of the experience and the in-
comprehensibility of the literal exomorphic representation,
are controlled by means of closed liminoid representations,
after which a common language is established in which to
give shape to the representations that operate in ordinary
knowledge and economic actions. If we wish to build a sys-
tem of representations that may serve to support an axiology
upon which we can develop a vital experience, we must leave
the world of the gods simply as final referents that may guar-
antee the edifice of human existence, as a primitive determi-
nation that gives the structure to the economic determinations
on which the daily life experience of the community is estab-
lished, but we cannot operate with exomorphisms aside from
273
In a text of the Augustinian Scotus Eriugena of the X Century, we find
clearly expressed this attitude of validation that dominated in the Medieval
Church: I think that all you have said is in accordance with reason and can
be verified by authority (Scotus Eriugena, Johannes, Periphyseon. Book V.
938B. Bellarmin and Dumbarton Oaks. Montreal and Washington.
1987.p.615.).
168
4.2 Liminal Mimesis
the closed endomorphic representations. Even the theological

speculation about divine substances -which moves about in
terrains that are outside ordinary experience-, ends up becom-
ing a closed game, not very different from that of geometry,
insofar as it starts out from non-demonstrable truths and con-
structs theorems. Sciences, like doctrines, are endomorphic
developments from exomorphisms, that is, mythologizations,
which presuppose a signification and an order in experience,
and operate in closed systems with them in a liminoid man-
ner.
169
CHAPTER 4: Mimesis
4.3 Liminoid Mimesis.
Heraclitus had already postulated the symbolic content of the

philosophical logos.274 In fact, the first steps in philosophy are
not so different from the ones of oracular knowledge, -it is a
matter of interpreting signs that unveil a subjacent objective
truth. However, signs are no longer bound by solidarity or
formal sameness alone, as in the shamanic mimesis, but in
processes highly protocolized that employ a principle of
demonstrative logical necessity –founded by Aristotle-, whose
antecedents are in the Pythagorean and Parmenidean tradition.
Nonetheless, the principle of magical similarity, by which the
similar engenders the similar, will continue to be valid,
through Platonic ontology, transformed now in a fundamental
category of thought with a first rate epistemological efficien-
cy, as the Parmenides dialog proves with great success. The
concept of similarity was made precise through those of iden-
tity, difference, and sameness which will be used by Aristotle
as well as by Euclid, and after them, by all the philosophical
and mathematical tradition. Philosophy substituted the intui-
tive notion of similarity used by shamanic and oracular mime-
sis, for a somewhat more clear notion of sameness in relation
to a set of properties (whether these are part of the definition,
or the difference of the object). To Aristotle, such concept is
274
The lord whose Oracle is in Delphi neither speaks nor hides anything,
but it manifests himself by signs. Heraclitus of Ephesus. Fragment 43 of
Plutarchus. In Kirk, G.S. and Raven J.E. Los Filósofos Presocráticos
(Presocratic Philosophers). Ed. Gredos. Madrid 1981.p.298. In the poem of
Parmenides, that employs the allegorical formula of the oracular and mys-
tery literature, we can see also the progressive transition from the oracular
mimesis to the natural.
170
4.3 Liminoid Mimesis
analyzable into three different types: numerical sameness, of

species and of genre. 275 If we explain the concept from set
theory,276 the first similarity is the one produced between two
aggregates with the same power; the second, the one that oc-
curs between two elements of the same set, that is, the one
given by at least one property common to the elements of the
set; the third is the sameness of the elements of two different
sets that are subsets of another. These epistemological simi-
larities are either a quantitative or a qualitative question, alt-
hough we are dealing with set properties in both cases, as it
occurred with the magical principles of solidarity (similarity
in relation to the property of spatiotemporal localization) 277
and sameness (in relation to any general property). And some-
thing analogous can be said concerning the notions of same-
ness that appear in Euclid’s work, whose method is an elabo-
ration of the Aristotelian proposals in the Analytics. His defi-
nitions are basically constructions of objects by sameness of
genre, showing a priori, by the definition, the corresponding
intuition of the concept that determines the object. The deter-
mination of the object is the determination of the genre: a line
is length without breadth, and the extremities of a line are
points.278 On the other hand, we find sameness of number and
species in Euclid’s common notions, both as general intuitions
275
Cf. Aristotle. Topics VII. 103a.6 and s.q.
276
Which does not involve making too much violence to the concept, for
the relation between genre and species is analogous to that of belonging
which takes place between class and subclass (given by the specific differ-
ence).
277
Obviously, Aristotle’s absolute physics cannot consider position as a
property of a set in relation to a referential framework.
278
Euclid. Elements. Book I. Definitions 2 and 3. Euclid’s Elements of
Geometry. The Greek text of J.L. Heiberg (1883–1885). Edited by Richard
Fiztpatrick. 2007.
171
CHAPTER 4: Mimesis
of what a property is. Magical similarity already operated

with numerical intuitions besides those of genre and species.
Thus, for instance, the sixty four hexagrams of the I-Ching
defined sixty four possible states of the universe that were
cyclically repeated, and particularized in different species,
according to a definite syntax, with the help of procedures of
chance. In this regard, the oracular mimesis contains the fun-
damental elements that we will encounter in logical, geomet-
rical and scientific systems, a set of intuitive, elementary and
relational categories, which conform different calculi after
some rules of formation and transformation, and a semantics
that translates the signs of the calculus into signs of other
systems of experience, the individual’s psychology, the
group’s political life, etc. The difference that occurs between
the logico-geometrical construction and the oracles is not,
hence, with regard to the intuition and operations with the
elements that are defined, but with the way in which the sys-
tem is constructed, the understanding that the definitions (de-
terminations or oroi, id est, limitations) are different from the
proofs, and that they cannot show the essence of the things
defined, as the demonstrations cannot either. 279 Whilst the
magical word expressed the essence of things -and Plato him-
self played with this idea after the different degrees of mime-
sis between object and word- Aristotle, by supplying an arbi-
trary character to signs, interrupted the chain of magical and
transcendental necessity that took place in the forms of the
liminal mimesis, and severed the principle of spatiotemporal
solidarity of signs in favor of a semantic solidarity amongst
279
This is the stance that we read in Posterior Analytics (Book II. VII-IX),
although in the Topics he seems to contradict the constructive character of
the Posterior Analytics, when affirming that a definition is a sentence that
signifies the essence of something. (Topics. I.V.)
172
them based on definitions. The symbolic calculi of the liminal

mimesis assumed their elements transcendentally, whereas the
systematization that logic adds, although it does not eliminate
the transcendentality of the logos itself (and will continue
doing so until 19th Century logic), does not assume either the
transcendental content of its objects, but instead these have
the liminoid content of the activity, which can be controlled in
closed systems by purely human means.
The application of the concept of sameness is not limited
to the epistemological milieu, but its general philosophical
use, in combination with the morphisms of metaphor,280 ex-
tends sameness beyond logical contents into the psychological
field, something that would entail the persistence of magical
causation (solidarity principle) now within a rationalized
sphere. Analogy, that is, the comparison of sameness in rela-
tion to some given properties between four elements taken in
double pairs –as when we say that old age is the evening of
life, that is, when we affirm that as old age is to life, so is
evening to day-,281 is an example of this persistence of liminal
elements in the intuition and comparison of scenarios and
objects. Liminal elements do not disappear completely in the
liminoid forms of mimesis, but simply a final exomorphic
representation is made with them, in a double natural sense,
psychological and physical: they are interiorized as an internal
operation of the logos or universal law in the human psyche,
but additionally they are exteriorized as efficient, formal and
final causes of the physis. In its psychological dimension,
Aristotle makes an instinct of the mimesis, a cognitive natural
280
By these, I mean all the morphic procedures of linguistic transformation,
and not only metaphor, i.e., allegory, synecdoche, metonymy, etc.
281
Giving the example of Empedocles that Aristotle uses in the Poetics.
1457. b. 24.
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CHAPTER 4: Mimesis
force that operates in humans, and not only in them: it is

something necessary in the natural way of living beings, with
the particularity that it is in the human being where it reaches
its highest peaks of perfection. The mimesis of the poet, inso-
far as natural force, allows the production or creation of a
work of art according to a true idea,282 an idea which acts as a
final cause that directs the diverse creative attempts that na-
ture makes after the poet’s reason, who is simply the efficient
cause of the former. On the one hand, the poet is the natural
cause, or efficient and material cause of the work, whereas the
universal, or god, is the supernatural cause, expressed by the
concepts of formal and final cause. 283 This conception ex-
presses a naturalist mimesis that transforms the objectification
of the supernatural into laws, a transformation that occurs in
the ontotheological process, and it does so in an impersonal
manner –as the oracular mimesis did likewise. Mimesis is,
within this framework, a process of particularization of the
universal into laws. These laws, however, are not expressed in
nature as a mere image of a celestial paradigm, but as its ba-
sis, its reason to be that way and not otherwise, through a
282
Cf. S.H. Butcher. Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and the Fine Arts. Dover
Publications . N. York 1951. p. 153.
283
In the Aristotelian mimetic framework, the substances which constitute
the different human beings, although being primary are, somehow, of a
different order than the substance of the Unmoved Mover. Although the
human being and the Divine are both intelligent, the Divine intelligence has
a distinctive reflective character, a kind of metathinking which is not always
attained by humans. It is only through the reflective thought, in particular,
on the contemplation of thinking that turns towards thought itself, that the
human becomes divine. When Aristotle equates life to intelligence (Meta-
physics. Book Lambda. 1072.b.25; Eudemian Ethics. 1244.b. 29.), he does
not limit it to a particular form of intellective activity, and everything that
lives, by the mere fact of living, thinks in some way, and is divine, and
since the human is the animal that thinks the most, is the most divine.
174
quadruple causation that links the world and its beings in a

necessary way. Mimesis is, therefore, an epistemological ac-
tion which links the thinking subject and the objects of expe-
rience through the general transcendental force of necessity
(ananke). The old oracular concept of necessity is given a
double logical and biological turn by Aristotle which sets the
foundations for a new scientific epistemology.284
It is interesting to observe the confirmation of the Aristote-
lian psychological naturalist hypotheses in the neuroscientific
experimentation of present times. When we see someone per-
forming an action, it produces not only a non-intentional acti-
vation of several visual areas of our brain, but also part of the
same motor circuits that we would elicit in order to fulfil the
same task are also activated. 285 What is more, we activate
internal representations of the corporeal state associated with
the actions we see, evoking automatically and spontaneously
sensations and emotions similar to the ones we would feel if
we were doing such actions.286 Mimesis seems to deepen its
roots into the most automatic functions of our brain and it
extends to the cognitive ones, as a group of physiological
actions that link living beings to their environment.
It would seem that the liminal mimetic residue of psychol-
ogy will remain as long as models of thought of rational psy-
chology are applied, in which the exomorphic final categories
have a transcendental content, as it is exemplified by the ex-
284
See the concept of ananke in Metaphysics. 1015. a20.
285
See Vittorio Gallese, Chistian Keysers and Giacocomo Rizzolatti. A
unifying view of the basis of social Cognition. Trends in Cognitive Science.
Vol.8. September 2004. Web.
286
See Vittorio Gallese, Paolo Mingone and Morris N. Eagle. Intentional
Attunement: Mirror Neurons and the Neural Underpinnings of interperson-
al Relations. Mimetictheory.org. Web.
175
CHAPTER 4: Mimesis
plicative models of the origin of language in the Enlighten-

ment or the German Idealism. A good example is given by
Kant’s philosophy, which is affected by this fact both in its
epistemological formulations –in relation to the transcenden-
tal character that the pure concepts of the understanding have
in the subject -and in the ideas about artistic inspiration ex-
pressed in the theory of genius. In both cases, the innate pre-
dispositions of the mind, through which the transcendental
influences human thought and action, are nothing more than
an ambiguous final reference that takes its semantic content
from traditional theological interpretations. This is particular-
ly evident in aesthetic theory, with the postulation that Kant
makes in it of an agent nature, which seems to give the moral
norm in art by way of a conscious act of will, as part of a plan
that is unknown to the human being. The cognitive compo-
nent of the faculty of judgment, in which the aesthetic taste
aprioristically is settled, will be based upon the presumption
of a purpose for nature. Such a purpose cannot be deduced
from nature, for it would be necessary for its inference some
sort of omniscience of the causal chains that constitute it.
Only if we assume a moral first cause that may function as
formal and teleological cause, and not as a generator of se-
quences of efficient and material causality, we can aspire to
understand the purpose of the universe. This moral first cause
is equivalent to the action of a god, and its necessity, in ac-
cordance to Kantian formulations, is purely practical, it is
derived from the possibility of forming the concept of a pur-
pose for the universe. 287 In other words, we understand the
universe insofar as we suppose that it has a purpose and that it
is organized as an artistic work whose contents are moral and
287
See Kant. Critique of the Power of Judgment.#87. 5:448 and s.q.
176
formally determined by a creator. Art, thus, has a double mi-

metic epistemological content: it shows moral contents direct-
ly, and serves as a formal analogy of the general process of
the universe.
However, it is not the transcendentality of the final repre-
sentations what produces its liminal psychological and epis-
temological character, but the linguistic structure of the my-
thologization process, which demands final representations.
The presumption of an order of the universe to make it intelli-
gible was found in the liminal forms of the mimesis as well as
in the liminoid ones. The extra-human component of literal or
exomorphic representations corresponds to the experience that
it is not man who controls his own destiny within the natural
cycles, by the mere exercise of his conscious and rational
powers. On the other hand, extra-human exomorphisms help -
in an intuitive manner- to avoid argumentative circularities
concerning origins, an epistemological strength which feeds
back the hypostasis of the exomorphic representations. In fact,
mimetic models in which there are no final exomorphic repre-
sentations cannot be constructed, as we can observe in the
Nietzschean metaphysical proposal. Nietzsche directly rejects
–as mere illusion- myths that see any type of order in the uni-
verse, for they simply express the illusion of representation,
necessary in the formation of life, but meaningless outside
this context. The Apollonian and Dionysian forces (or repre-
sentation and the will to power) constitute a single mimetic
impulse that is outlined with contrary movements. The Nie-
tzschean concept of will, or Dionysian force, is not -as that of
Schopenhauer-, a mere nullification of the I and of representa-
tions. In fact, they are not opposite concepts, for the Dionysi-
an includes the Apollonian as one of its moments. Representa-
tion, the Apollonian mask, is taken as an endomorphism, a
177
CHAPTER 4: Mimesis
metaphor within a representational game in which there are

no literal representations, but a continuous play of creation of
order without any other purpose than life itself. The mimetic
problem to Nietzsche is that of the determination of new
forms, of new organic models able to gather vigorous pro-
posals for life, forms that can be adjusted to physiological
necessities, capable of stimulating vitality and augmenting the
desire to live, models which are not found hypostatized any-
where else, but in the here and now of everyday life experi-
ence, without the need for final representations.288
Curiously enough, Nietzsche’s initial proposal of a sym-
bolic naturalism ends up being transformed into an ideal natu-
ralism in which the representation of matter, and in particular
of an animate matter, has a literal function in the mimetic
system. The symbolic naturalism, expressed in the notion of
the will to power, implied the negation of the existence of
literal representations, the impossibility of the existence of the
thing in itself, or in any case, of its intelligibility, if it existed.
The will to power as vital force is already a metaphor, alt-
hough consciously taken as an exomorphism (despite the ne-
gation of the possibility of exomorphisms within Nietzsche’s
system), and represents life’s initial point, the determination
that the philosopher-artist declares as primitive, although
knowing the impossibility of literal and final representations.
The axiology created after these principles is not merely sub-
jective, but supposedly vital, it is the universal law just as life
288
For this reason, the philosopher-artist who creates the values must be
intoxicated by his creation, an intoxication which Nietzsche equates to that
of the great religious and sexual ecstasies (The Will to Power # 800.), and
from which he elaborates instinctively the principles of order, a supposed
great style, in which the formal legality of his axiology may be perfectly
adapted to the demands of matter.
178
dictates it, or rather, just as life imposes it to matter. The im-

position takes place by means of the will to power which con-
ditions the material phenomenal world, much in the manner in
which Marduk (or any of the storm gods) subjugates chaos,
generating a universal representation, in this case, that of the
eternal return, which is self-erected as necessary by mere
repetition. This myth, circular in more than one sense, alt-
hough it solves the problem of the endomorphic representa-
tion of the will to power, by adopting it freely as primitive
determination, it does not manage to do the same for matter,
for even though the representation of matter that science of-
fers is considered as endomorphic, and the concept of cause
and calculus are metaphors emerged from others of subject
and object, the Nietzschean postulate of matter as energy and
force is, nonetheless, a literal representation, from which Nie-
tzsche endomorphizes representations that have the structure
of the physics of his time.289 Nietzschean primitive determina-
tions are literal -much to his dismay-, and the universe he
proposes extends, in a finite and precise manner, as a force
over which the different endomorphic images of knowledge
are sustained. In this sense, he is proposing an idealistic natu-
ralism in which something incomprehensible and undefinable
-a force without beginning or end and with a good number of
properties equivalent to those of the infinite supernatural be-
ings of mythological traditions- is manifested as finite quanti-
ty of energy in the will to power.
The Nietzschean contradiction occurs by the attempt to
build a merely liminal cosmological system that lacks exo-
morphic representations, a pure state of becoming in which
the reference is given by the continuous creation and destruc-
289
See numbers #1066 and 1067, Will to Power.
179
CHAPTER 4: Mimesis
tion of forms without referent, an image like the one narrated

in the Ghita where Vishnu manifests as the Supreme Being
before the terrified Arjun. However, such a representation is
unintelligible without a morphic chain that contains an exo-
morphism, a final referent that might operate both as a nega-
tive determination (beyond which no representation can be
formed), as well as an endomorphic representation that might
link the exomorphism to the metaphorizations of language.
The declaration of the inexistence of supernatural principles is
irrelevant in relation to the communicative functionality of the
exomorphism in the mythologization processes, through
which we interpret vital experience. This had already oc-
curred in Lucretius’s atomist system, in which the principles
of transcendent universal harmony, whose sources were the
gods, were substituted by the imperturbability that the philo-
sophical knowledge of natural causes of the universe provides
when faced with death.290 In place of such universal harmony,
the cosmic homogeneity that the atomist doctrine allows links
things according to a necessary order, and the continuity of
the natural phenomena makes any supernatural explanation
superfluous, but the atoms end up functioning as exomorphic
representations of a transcendental character, so the system
can be intelligible at all, as it will also occur with the Nie-
tzschean concepts of atom, matter and energy. 291 Another
290
Harmony is no longer a universal, nor an individual principle. See
Lucrecio, De Rerum Natura. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Científicas. Madrid 1983. (2 Vol.). Volume 2. v.v.131-36. (English Edition:
Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus), De Rerum Natura. Trans. W.D.H. Rouse.
Harvard University Press. Cambridge (Mass.) 2006.)
291
From this point of view, the myths written by the poets would mimetize
the links between human being and nature, they are interpretations of the
social experience. It is interesting to observe that the materialistic myth that
Lucretius developed, by not placing at the center of the system neither the
180
example of the liminal irreducibility of literal representations

is offered by the Indian philosophical system of Lokayata (or
C rv ka). The doctrine proclaims the existence of a single
world and the falsity of supernatural beings.292 Lokayata pre-
sents a materialism based on the four traditional elements
(earth, water, fire and air), and a moral and logical skepticism,
which postulates the indifference of nature in relation to hu-
man life, as well as the illusory character of all conceptual
knowledge.293 Lokayata tries to dissolve any literal represen-
tation which is not that of immediate experience. In the refu-
tation of the inferential thinking undertaken by Jayarasi in his
human being nor life, produces an effect of theologization which is contrary

to what was intended, since the atoms and the order of the system function
as literal representations. The new naturalist myth liberates from the old
myths, even though the mimesis is now in relation to some beings that are,
like the gods, outside of appearances (formed by composed bodies): the
atoms, whose knowledge liberates with religious enthusiasm, like Lucretius
himself felt in relation to the doctrine of Epicure. Philosophical myths fill
the gap left by the old gods and rites. Thus, for example, nature expressing
itself in the singing of birds is the origin of all human music. Men began by
imitating birds before being able to develop their own songs, and the wind
on the reeds taught them to make flutes of Pan and later the Aulos. Primi-
tive men themselves were the Muses when they started their musical behav-
ior and when through work and progressive refinement took the sounds
from an animal stage to a civilized one: reason brought something that at
the beginning was a game and an entertainment to the highest peaks of
perfection. (Cf. Lucretius. De Rerum Natura.5.v.v.1380. Vol.II. Ed. Cit.
p.124.)
292
The doctrine, presumably, goes back to the Brihaspati Sutra (600 A.Z.),
and has come down to us in treatises of the 7th Century A.Z. and later,
although the first skepticisms in relation to supernatural beings inside the
Indian tradition already took place in the Rigveda (See: mandala VIII, hymn
89; mandala IV, hymn 24; mandala II, hymn 12; mandala I, hymn 164,
among others).
293
Cf. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles A. Moore. A Sourcebook in
Indian Philosophy. Ed. Cit. p.p. 227-228.
181
CHAPTER 4: Mimesis
Tattvopaplavasimha (7th Century A.Z.), the formation of the

major premise of syllogisms is considered defective, for it
depends on the direct perception of a universal principle, a
thing that, obviously, would be impossible. 294 The system
starts by rejecting any form of conceptual universalization
proclaiming a radical perceptive empiricism that cannot be
but, paradoxically, an epistemological idealization, for it does
not correspond with the most elementary forms of ordinary
human experience, based on language, which operates with
principles of inductive generalization and deductive universal-
ization in a spontaneous manner long before any philosophi-
cal formalization. From the point of view of Hindu religious
systems, Lokayata exemplifies the outmost consummation of
the Kaliyuga, 295 the era of Kali or destruction, and in this
sense, it does not achieve the elaboration of an independent
natural system, but instead a sort of atheism that takes its
meaning from the negation of the gods, making literal the
representation of such negation, contradicting its point of
departure, besides adopting, in a naïve manner, the immediate
experience as an exomorphism, in a purely exomorphic cos-
mic scenario that openly contradicts the properties of lan-
guage that are being applied in the theory’s development.
On the other hand, the liminal content (understood from
naturalism whether as a mere illness or as ignorance that can
294
Curiously, Jayarasi pretends to refute the logical inference, and the
determination of the relation between cause and effect with an argumenta-
tion based on conditionals. See Refutation of Inference in A Sourcebook in
Indian Philosophy. Ed. Cit. p.p. 236-246.
295
In the drama Prabodha–candrodaya, in the dialogue between the Mate-
rialist master and the Pupil (a scenario, on the other hand classic of the
model Guru-disciple of the entire Indian philosophy), the master affirms
that the goddess Kali kneels to the feet of the knower of the Lokayata doc-
trine. See A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy. Ed. Cit. p.248.
182
be dispelled by means of philosophical and scientific think-

ing) is expressed in liminoid mimetic models in an inevitable
and imperceptible manner for its agents, as we can observe in
the literality of scientific representations which makes of
nineteenth-century science a new and true religion. As a prac-
tical religion it will require the involvement of dialectic mate-
rialism together with the militarized fervor of revolutionary
practice, both contributing to the ascent of modern science to
an ontological status in transcendental matters that previously
was exclusive to theology.296 Naturalist representations substi-
tute supernatural beings by concepts that are closer to every-
day life experience (not oneiric), as those of matter, or causal
link between phenomena, which insofar as they operate like
endomorphisms, as more or less lexicalized metaphors, are
intelligible, but when they are assigned a literal, final value -
beyond an inevitable minimal negative determination (from
their function as first referents for reason)-, they become in-
comprehensible, because the no definable, the no limitable, is
not representable, nor thinkable. Ordinary human experience
296
The revolutionary experience will function in an equivalent manner to
the liminal religious experience, as Max Weber noticed. That is so not only
due to the warlike conflict by means of which power is obtained and the
preceding mimetic framework is eliminated (a process which involves
anomic and liminal stages) but also because the instauration of the new
naturalist mythic representations within everyday life implies a literal rein-
terpretation of the relations of production and the history of humanity,
something that already implies a liminal framework, that progressively will
be fixed in the metaphors of a new political order. The last great movement
of intellectuals, sustained by a religious faith, not unitary, but with im-
portant common grounds, was the revolutionary Russian “intelligentsia”.
Max Weber. Sociología de la religión. Chapter VII. Trans. Enrique Gavi-
lán. Istmo. Madrid. 1977.p.189. (English Edition: Weber, Max, The Sociol-
ogy of Religion. Trans. Ephraim Fischoff. Beacon Press. Boston (Mass.)
1993.)
183
CHAPTER 4: Mimesis
is endomorphic, cultural, based on tacit ontoepistemological

agreements that make it unproblematic, but insofar as a posi-
tive exomorphic semantic content is assigned to such repre-
sentations, we find ourselves again in a situation as misty and
mystical as the ones that ancient mythologies had with their
gods. Let us take the conceptual structure of the atom as an
example. When we use it as a fundamental building block in
order to think the constitution of matter it is unproblematic,
for we simply proceed to aggregate some parts into a whole,
parts which in turn we know to be non-final, since we have at
our disposal a more basic formal structure made up of the
concepts of subatomic particle and force. However, when we
arrive to literal structures, as in today’s case, those of the bos-
ons and fermions, the latter, inheritors of the metaphor of
matter, are for the moment literal representations beyond
which there is only speculation and mystery, as the ones that
M-Theory develops in its attempts to endomorphize such
representations. The final goal is to produce one-dimensional
representations that may serve as final referents to the theo-
ries, to the endomorphizations, by which we would be conjur-
ing the mystery of structures of order (dimension) superior to
one, but only to transfer it into those of that first referential
order. Every time we operate with exomorphic concepts, i.e.,
with referents of order one, we will reproduce the experience
of liminality, of the openness of our existence.
An exomorphic representation -like reason is for science
or god for religion-, is undefinable, that is, we cannot show
clearly and unambiguously limits for these concepts, whether
from other concepts or through general unequivocal intui-
tions. Nevertheless, such representations have a minimum
semantic content that makes them function as a limit for the
endomorphization, whether this content may be derived from
184
the Lebenswelt, as in the systems of liminal mimesis, or from

dogmatic formalized conventions. In both cases, this mini-
mum referential semantic content, this exomorphic limit,
serves as referent towards the endomorphization as well as
towards the indefinite, the apeiron that intuition negatively
determines beyond that limit. In mythology, it is the case of
the representation of Brahman, or that of the Being of the
Kabala who is part of the Superesse, or that of Para-Brahman,
from whom a negative representation can be formed: that
which is not Brahman. In contemporary physics’ ontoepiste-
mology, it is the objective reality: that which still has not been
determined by our theories. We understand Para-Brahman in
relation to Brahman, unknown reality in relation to the repre-
sentations of known reality. In both cases, it concerns a mi-
metic liminal projection, over which we build liminoid endo-
morphic representations, which are a mere phantasmagoric
reflection of the endomorphic representations of our cultural
experience.
If the concept of causation can be understood as a species
of mimesis, philosophical and scientific systems can be con-
sidered as a particularization of a more general epistemologi-
cal and psychological process for the understanding of experi-
ence. On the other hand, exomorphic representations –
whether transcendental or product of human agency- have an
unavoidable liminal content which amplifies the epistemolog-
ical and psychological continuity between the symbolical
constructions of traditional myth and those of science and
philosophy. For this reason, we cannot expect to gain any
insight into the concept of myth by simply giving its differ-
ence in relation to modern symbolic epistemological construc-
tions.
185
C. Some Conclusions
We began the study of the mythic domain by observing the

equivalent social functionality of archaic myths, religion and
metaphysics, realms traditionally separated on the basis of the
differences of their conceptual objects and methods. As a first
conceptual referent from which to treat the differences of
these three fields, we used the notion of das Heilige, especial-
ly linked to myths and religion, although present as well in the
majority of philosophical traditional ontologies one way or
another. Right away we found ourselves with the hypostatic
epistemological difficulties of the term, analogous to those
already examined by Kant in his paralogisms of pure reason
and in the fourth antinomy concerning the postulate of an
absolutely necessary being. We also discarded the use of das
Heilige as a pure concept of the understanding intended by
Otto, who by characterizing das Heilige as rational and irra-
tional at the same time was postulating a compound concept
that disqualified it as one of Kant’s categories, among which
he intended to include it. In the same manner, we rejected the
possibility of das Heilige as a derived concept, for the very
same property of being derived made it contradictory to Ot-
to’s thesis of das Heilige as an original and underivable facul-
ty of the mind, contradictions that we would find even if das
187
Some Conclusions
Heilige were a simple category, and which were due to the

problems that idealist philosophy had in order to explain the
relations between the sphere of the ideal and that of experi-
ence. An anthropological objection based on experience was
added to the epistemological problems of das Heilige: there is
not a universal concept, in an anthropological sense, common
to all human beings, that may characterize actions and reli-
gious objects. What we call consecrations are collective psy-
chological actions with economic and social foundations
which the traditional transcendental use of das Heilige ig-
nores. For this reasons, we concluded that supernatural con-
cepts do not serve to support epistemologically the differences
between myth, religion and metaphysics, nor to explain the
nature of myths, because they do not offer anything that was
not already contained in the initial ontological assumptions,
assumptions which are, precisely, mythical.
We showed afterwards, searching for an anthropological
characterization of myth from its own ontological structures,
how the four fundamental categories that appear in the narra-
tives about the origins of most traditions, are reducible to two,
for the others have a subordinate ontological identity, and that
we could arrange myths according to a human-divine axis
which has a clear psychobiological constitution which led us
to consider traditional mythology as a proto-scientific form of
expressing the concepts that integrate the Weltanschauung of
a social collective. The definition of myth of Durkheim-
Habermas, after the idea of the communicative functionality
that it has as founding narrative of social identity, led us to a
first elucidation of an anthropological viewpoint, epistemo-
logically valid and consistent with experience, from which to
analyze the phenomenon of myth. Thus, we began by examin-
ing the communicative function of myth enquiring about its
188
Some Conclusions
relation with language in general, and we found that the first

explanations concerning the nature of language, whether the
anthropomorphic or theological ones, took precisely the form
of myths, being language itself another transcendental idea,
assimilated to a transcendental concept of the human being or
the divine. This fact produced a circular argument, since
myth, from the communicative perspective, pointed towards
language, but any attempt to give an account of language
returned us to the realm of myth. The circularity was pro-
duced in the sphere of myths as well as in the sphere of ra-
tional psychology when it tried to explain the nature and
origin of language. We found ourselves back with transcen-
dental concepts not only in mythology, but also in Plato’s
philosophy of language, occupied in resolving the aporia of
his own idealist system by appealing to the concept of mime-
sis.
It was Aristotle who interrupted the mythic tradition that
treated language as a transcendental object, shifting to a theo-
ry which placed the origin of language in the vital processes
that lead the organism to perceive and think, and particulariz-
ing human language as a communicative tool for social ra-
tional psychology. However, by not dealing with the phenom-
ena of myth in his theory, he did not get to link the psychobio-
logical components with the sociological ones, lacking the
bonding link between the mature rational psychology of the
Polis and the most archaic forms of thought, the connection of
the vital processes that lead living organisms to think with the
first forms of human thought concerning self-identity. Aristo-
tle lacked the tool for a procedural thought in the social and
psychological spheres, and its construction will not be possi-
ble until European Enlightenment takes the first steps in the
philosophies of social and natural history.
189
Some Conclusions
It will be Herder the first to understand the importance of

myth as an explanatory link between language, as a rational
finished instrument, and the natural communicative processes
observed in animals. He proposed myths as records of human
processes of symbolization, a memory of the evolution of the
human soul, a history of its development, a thesis that would
imply that our dictionaries are, in fact, old pantheons, for our
first symbolizations were theological animations of nature.
With Herder, the reflection about myths is firmly settled on a
linguistic debate that removes the mythological discussion
from the human-divine axis and its contradictions, making
mythology gain philosophical credibility insofar as it may be
a source of philosophical concepts. Schelling will extend the
bonding character of myth with nature, its character as a first
linguistic form of humanity that can be used to trace the de-
velopment -now with a transcendental content- not only of the
human soul, but of the Weltseele, according to a meta-
historical plan in which the different stages of humanity’s
evolution and of life are integrated into a conceptual unit.
Nonetheless, Schelling’s meta-historical theologizing, by
making the myth tautegorical, diminished the relevance of the
cognitive function that it had in Herder’s theory. If language
is just a means for the expression of the Weltseele which is
manifested in nature following its own principles and inten-
tions, language is again a sign of the Divine, as it was for
Plato, and stays absorbed within it, as it occurred in the Om or
the biblical Logos. The communicative human function of
myth is (once again) secondary, and we find ourselves amidst
the old hypostases and their contradictions. Under these as-
sumptions, myth is not an epistemological tool, for the con-
tent of the tautegorical unfoldment which is human history is
never obvious to the human understanding, but instead, myth
190
Some Conclusions
is a kind of footprint of the Weltseele with full meaning for a

transhistorical and transcendental intelligence, the Godhead.
As Müller understood, the theological absorption of myth
blocks the way to the linguistic comprehension initiated by
Herder, and also to any anthropological explanation. Resum-
ing the linguistic approach, Müller places the interest of my-
thology in the valuable knowledge that it offers about the past
of peoples and languages of Antiquity, in the perspectives that
it shows concerning human psychology, giving it, therefore,
an epistemological foundation. However, Müller’s linguistic
approach is conditioned by a Christian rational psychology
that destroys its own object of study by qualifying the content
of mythological narratives as immoral, some sort of illness of
human infantile thought. The problem with Müller’s perspec-
tive is not only his Christian prejudice incapable of self-
criticism, but the absence of an examination of mythic com-
municative function in social processes that hinders the un-
derstanding of the rationality inherent to the economic actions
of the most archaic cultures, an exam which will not be under-
taken until sociology studies the anthropological value of
myths -in the work of Durkheim and Mauss-, as well as their
dimension as social and economic action -initiated by Weber.
Despite the limitations of the foundational discourse of
mythology in relation to the social functionality of communi-
cation in which identity is narrated, the linguistic perspective -
by connecting with the classical problem of language origin-,
made explicit the mimetic and metaphorical dimension of the
general processes of symbolization in which myth is in-
scribed. Metaphor reopened the old mimetic problem of the
original and the copy, a difficulty easily surmountable from a
general anthropological point of view based on a theory of
morphisms constructed without the use of transcendental cat-
191
Some Conclusions
egories. Myths, like any process of symbolization, take some

representations that are considered literal or undefinable as
final referents. In the realm of experience, we interpret the
world after these exomorphic representations in a process of
endomorphization or metaphorization (semantical transfor-
mations in general) that generates the uncritical structure of
knowledge of the Lebenswelt. Nevertheless, the process of
endomorphization should not be understood strictly as a met-
aphorization, for the concept of metaphor presupposes a strict
literal meaning which is linguistically transformed, but exo-
morphisms are not such. Exomorphic representations are lim-
inal final representations of something unknown, the apeiron,
a minimal representation of the boundary of knowledge of a
given human group. I called mythologization to the dual pro-
cess of establishing referential limits and to the subsequent
indexation of the social experience from them, that is, to the
sequential processes of exomorphisms and endomorphisms
that are expressed in social communications, those of identity
as well as the functional or economical ones of the group.
Mythologization processes are not circumscribed to the
sphere of traditional myths but express an ampler social epis-
temological dynamics, a phenomenon that can be observed in
historical narratives and in scientific thought. Historical narra-
tive emerges as a variation of the mythological, after an on-
toepistemological paradigmatic change in which as limits or
literal references are taken concepts such as: fact, necessary
sequence of facts, purpose, or endomorphisms linked to spe-
cific ontoepistemologies are constructed such as: history tri-
bunal, manifest destiny, historical error, etc. The object of
history and the subject that writes it are no less problematic
than myth’s transcendental categories. Nonetheless, both,
history and myth, obey the same social functionality, that of
192
Some Conclusions
the elaboration of identity, making possible their joint study

from this viewpoint.
The mimetic process of mythologization in which identity
narratives are built -whether mythical or historical- functions
in a dual morphic process. The social narrator determines the
objects and scenarios of the narrative, but at the same time,
the narrative, insofar as it is integrated in the memory of the
group and serves as a valuation standard for experience, will
condition the formation of the narrator’s identity, in a process
which feedsback flexibly in relation to the new experience.
This is a process of liminal experience, open, irreversible,
whose limits are either not well defined or not defined at all.
Exomorphic representations are the maximal objectification
of this liminality, which can only be incorporated to the
group’s life mythico-ritually mediated by the action of the
poet-shaman, interpreter of the specific signs that each group
sets in the mythologization. Such incorporation is the repre-
sentational endomorphization that constitutes the heritage of
the Lebenswelt knowledge, where the incomprehensibility of
the literal exomorphic representation, has been controlled by
means of liminoid representations, closed and reversible, from
which a common language in which to give form to the repre-
sentations that operate on ordinary knowledge and economic
actions is established.
A methodical endomorphization was initiated with philo-
sophical thought, in which the imprecise processes of magical
causation were reduced to explicitly defined frameworks of
liminoid objects and scenarios. Logic and geometry interrupt-
ed the chain of magical necessity in favor of a semantic soli-
darity within liminoid scenarios, which is constructed from
definitions and postulates, explicitly stating, as much as pos-
sible, the procedures of cognition. Even so, the liminal ele-
193
Some Conclusions
ments did not disappear completely in the liminoid forms of

mimesis, for they were used as a final exomorphic representa-
tion in a double natural sense, psychological and physical:
they were interiorized as an internal operation of the logos or
universal law in the human psyche, and on the other hand,
were exteriorized as efficient, formal and final causes of the
physis, as final referents or unmoved movers. This irreducible
liminal component of the processes of mythologization has a
linguistic origin, for we cannot construct mimetic epistemo-
logical models without exomorphic representations, as the
Kantian Transzendentale Dialektik proves, or the different
axiomatic models produced by the mathematical science of
the last two centuries, or the metaphysical failures of the sys-
tems of Lokayata, Lucretius or Nietzsche, or as it is also
proven by the epistemological contradictions of naïve natural-
isms in general. Exomorphic representations are undefinable
within the mythic system in which they appear, for we cannot
show limits for these concepts clearly and unambiguously,
whether from others or from unequivocal general intuitions,
for we would need to possess other wider concepts from
which to tackle our human experience, but if we could count
with such concepts, these would be, in turn, the new exo-
morphic representations. In any case, those referents, no mat-
ter how ambiguously defined they may be, are necessary as a
minimum form of limitation and negative determination. The
minimum referentiality of the exomorphic terms is produced
by their mere inclusion into a system of mythologization pro-
cesses, that is, they obtain their minimum meaning by occur-
ring in a previously interpreted system that is constituted by
endomorphisms of the Lebenswelt. The minimum semantic
referential content, this exomorphic limit, serves as referent
not only for the endomorphization, but also for the indefinite,
194
Some Conclusions
which the intuition determines in a negative manner beyond

such limit.
We could have a more precise preliminary definition of
myth in the following terms: myths are communicative social
actions that generate patterns of collective identity and eco-
nomic valuation from cognitive processes that follow a limi-
nal dynamic of morphisms. Some immediate questions arise:
How is the minimum semantic content obtained by the exo-
morphic representations? Or asked in other terms: how are
formed the valuative representations of the Lebenswelt which
give a semantic content to mythologization processes? In
order to answer these questions we will have to understand
the processes of social valuation, not from the limits of a ra-
tional psychology but from the epistemological basis of an
evolutionary neuropsychology.
195
Appendixes
Appendix A
Appendix A: Cosmogonic Narratives
Narratives of
Creation lab
Theological
Pan-anthropic M orphism Pan-anthropos
Pluralism
M ero-anthropic M orphism
Isomorphism lab lab
M orphism of Infinitude Mundus lab
Auto-M orphism
M orphisms lab
lab
Theological Monism Mero-anthropos
APEIRON
198
Table A. 1: Cosmogonic Narratives

Appendix B
Appendix B: Process of Divinization-Mythologization
Time Increase in Mythopoetic Complexity
Anima Mundi King-God Universal Law Human Law

Deus Otiosus Deus Otiosus Deus Otiosus Deus Otiosus
Time Superesse
Civilizing
Totem-Ancestor
Ancestor
Shaman 1.
Founder of Shaman N. Proteus Animae Bios
Rituals
God of First
Shaman Q.
Generation Titans M aya Physis
Increase in Mythopoetic Complexity
Protosangu
created by
Sangu Castes
God of Second Emperor
God Second
Generation Philosopher
Generation
created by King
Sangu, Lugal
Ugula and the
Ensi Castes
God of Third
Generation Universal Laws Heroic Politician
created by
Sangu, Lugal
Ugula Castes
M eta
Divinities
Good-Evil Ideas
Supreme God Logos
Scientific
Pantheos
Theories
M etatheories
Table B. 2: Process of Divinization-Mythologization
199
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General Index Volume I
social, 15, 34, 69, 92, 109,

A 112, 114, 122, 123, 125,
128, 142, 154, 195
Achaemenid Empire, 167
teleological, 63
Achilles, 122
valuation, 34
action
vital, 26, 121, 122
animal, 17
actor, 37, 60, 144, 164
anthropological, 36
actuality, 78
biological, 124
Adam, 38
communicative, 62, 63
Adam Cadmon, 42
conceptualizing, 154
Adonis, 103
cosmogonic, 113, 117
Adorno, T.W., 145
divine, 112, 114
aesthetics, 11, 25, 97, 99, 147,
dramatic, 158
149, 176
economic, 34, 66, 68, 114,
Agdistis, 56
116, 133, 146, 168, 191,
Ahura Mazda, 44, 115
193
Air, 48
foundational, 117
Akkad, 22, 36, 37, 131
human, 37, 67, 71, 116, 122,
Alatanga, 46
162, 167
Alexander the Great, 122
identity, 74
Alfonso X of Castille, 132
imitative, 16
Allah, 16, 75
liminal, 157
Altai, 107, 120
linguistic, 78
Amma, 53
mimetic, 12, 152
An, 47
mythical, 9, 11, 12
analogy, 25, 87, 95, 105, 150,
narrative, 15, 18, 151
177
natural, 103, 157
Analytics, The, 171, 172
philosophical, 11
Anath, 46
ritual, 45, 154, 158
223
General Index
ancestor, 17, 24, 25, 45, 50, 53, Ashok Maurya, 122
55, 56, 67, 68, 74, 75, 101, Assyria, 122, 130
108, 126, 127, 148, 155, 156, Asuras, 46
163, 166 Atahensic, 40
androgynous, 22, 38, 39, 58 Athens, 72, 73, 132, 138
anima mundi, 89 Atman, 42, 59, 165
animism, 82, 83, 154 atom, 38, 105, 124, 180, 181,
animist theory, 27, 101 184
anomia, 157, 158, See liminal Atomism, 60, 180
anthropology, 11, 17, 22, 60, 63, Attis, 26, 32, 102
90, 156 audience, 88, 120, 158
antinomy, 28, 66, 86, 90, 92, Aumbla, 41
113, 114, 130, 187 Australia, 50
Antiquity, 60, 90, 105, 191 Australian Aborigines, 24, 45,
apeiron, 44, 48, 50, 51, 60, 107, 50, 74, 75, 152
185, 192 authority, 127, 131, 168
Aphrodite, 56, 159, 160 authorship, 137, 148, 149, 162,
Apollo, 151, 159, 160, 166 167
Apollodorus, 47, 49 Avesta, 167
Apollonian, 62, 99, 100, 103, axiology, 145, 168, 178
151, 177 axiomatic, 11, 194
Apsu, 37, 46, 47, 48
archaic societies, 22, 27, 154, B
155
Baal, 46, 115
Aristotelian, 12, 23, 72, 75, 79,
Babylon, 36, 37, 47, 48, 69, 114,
80, 84, 96, 171, 174, 175
130, 167
Aristotle, 72, 75, 77, 78, 80, 84,
Bahir, 42
95, 112, 150, 151, 170, 171,
Bai Ulgan, 107
172, 173, 174, 175, 189
Beek, Walter E.A., 53
Arjun, 31, 68, 180
being qua being, 24
Armour, R. A., 44, 48, 56, 59
Ben-Menahem, Y., 143
art, 84, 97, 132, 138, 142, 147,
Bestseller, 145
161, 174, 176
Bhagavad Ghita, 26, 31, 42, 59,
Artha-Shastra, 132
68, 180
Arthur, King, 139, 165
Big Bang, 103, 106
224
General Index
biology, 31 Catholic Church, 41, 115

Black Foot, 36 causality, 92, 113, 114, 116,
blood, 56, 102 117, 122, 124, 142, 143, 144,
Bon Religion, 49, 51, 54 152, 159, 162, 175, 176, 185
Book, The, 26, 129 causation,
Boris Godunov, 137 magical, 153, 154, 173, 193
Brahma, 42, 51, 52 cause, 59, 75, 92, 113, 164, 166,
Brahman, 16, 42, 45, 50, 59, 75, 175, 176, 179, 180
165, 185 efficient, 75, 174, 194
brain, 126, 156, 175 final, 173, 194
Brouwer, L.E.J., 126 formal, 153, 173, 194
Buber, M., 57, 60, 63, 64, 161 material, 75, 174
Buddha, 122 moral first, 176
Buddhism, 26, 31, 34, 36, 50, cave, 53, 55, 154
51, 60, 99 Celt, 36, 139
Bundahishn, 115 ceremony, 16, 22, 120, 155, 156,
Burkert, W., 161 158, 161
Bushongo, 36, 44 ancient, 16
mythico-ritual, 168
C shamanic, 154, 156
Chandragupta Maurya, 132
Caananite, 36
chaos, 36, 40, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49,
Caesar, 122
50, 51, 56, 57, 60, 70, 143,
Caicai Vilu, 37, 47
179
calculus, 172, 173, 179
Chaos, 48, 49, 143
Campbell, J., 64
Cherokee, 36
Carrasco, D., 39, 55
Chicomoztoc, 55
C rv ka, 181
Chiminichagua, 45
Cassirer, E., 95, 96, 97, 99, 100,
China, 40, 138
101, 109
Chinese, 36, 40, 47, 49, 51, 54,
caste, 50, 167
122, 139
category, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 37,
Choctaw, 36, 52, 53
45, 57, 58, 62, 63, 72, 74,
Chou, Duke of, 162
75,90, 96, 98, 99, 100, 109,
Christ, 79, 88, 102, 115, 125
113, 130, 134, 151, 170, 172,
175, 187, 188, 192
225
General Index
Christianism, 25, 26, 88, 89, 91, cosmogony, 40, 45, 52, 55, 60,
107, 131, 133, 136, 139 75, 113, 117, 130, 131
Chronos, 46, 54 cosmos, 59, 66, 116, 152, 165,
Chucham Cyalmo, 54 166
Ciracocha, 55 Coyolxauhqui, 39
citizen, 33, 70, 136, 139, 158 Cratylus, 76, 78, 80
city, 22, 30, 59, 83, 85, 93, 98, criticism, 11, 69, 191
99, 111, 114, 116, 130, 131, cultural industry, 142, 143, 144,
132, 134, 138, 143 145
civilizations, 92, 134 Cybele, 32, 56, 115
clay, 51, 52, 53 Cyclops, 142
Clio, 112
Coatepec, 39 D
cognition, 35, 193
death, 21, 26, 46, 47, 49, 65,
colonialism, 139
102, 115, 157, 180
complexity, 12, 64
Declaration of Human Rights,
Comte, A., 61
70
Condillac, E.B., 79, 80, 81, 84,
Demeter, 166
93
democracy, 72
condition of possibility, 77, 89,
Desire, 48, 137, 178
113
Devas, 46
Condorcet, J.A.N., 61
Diderot, D., 79
Confucius, 162
Diké, 72
consciousness, 51, 62, 63, 65,
Dilthey, W., 25, 26, 129, 131
87, 101, 131, 156, 160, 161,
Dionysian, 99, 100, 101, 103,
165
177
class, 133
Dionysus, 54, 95, 159, 160
historical, 128, 129, 133
divine plan, 129
Constitution of Athens, 72
DNA, 17
constructivism, 12
Dogon, 53
contingency, 89, 143
dreamtime walkabout, 45
continuous rationality, 11, 12
Durkheim, E., 27, 32, 62, 71, 94,
Copernicus, N., 102
152, 188, 191
Corbin, H., 64
cosmic egg, 40, 53, 54
226
General Index
E epistemological, 10, 11, 12, 18,

22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30,
Earth, 39, 42, 45, 47, 53, 91, 166
31, 35, 51, 56, 63, 66, 94, 97,
earth, 22, 47, 51, 52, 54, 55, 91,
99, 104, 107, 108, 116, 122,
106, 128, 181
121, 123, 124, 126, 131, 142,
economic determination, 67,
149, 151, 159, 160, 162, 164,
133, 168
170, 171, 173, 175, 176, 177,
ecstasy, 160, 161
182, 185, 187, 188, 190, 193,
Egypt, 22, 36, 44, 48, 52, 56, 59,
191, 192, 194, 195
103
epistemology, 11, 22, 24, 29, 60,
Egyptian, 43, 44, 48, 52, 53, 56,
86, 97, 109, 137, 143, 175,
122, 130, 131, 166
185
Eleusinian mysteries, 26
Eranos Group, 64, 65, 66, 85
Eliade, M., 29, , 32, 38, 52, 60,
Eros, 49, 159
64, 154, 155, 156
Estonian, 55
Else, G., 150
ethics, 25
emergence, 67, 73, 129, 142,
Euclid, 170, 171
157
Euhemerism, 61
emergentism, 12
Eunomía, 72
emotion, 10, 11, 26, 37, 57, 80,
Euripides, 25, 138
98, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104,
Europe, 122, 135
108, 123, 137, 140, 149, 157,
everyday life, 111, 113, 117,
158, 160
159, 178, 183
Enciclopédie, 79
evolution, 15, 82, 89, 95, 97,
endomorphism, 105, 106, 107,
138, 190
108, 116, 123, 125, 177, 183,
evolutionism, 12
192, 194
exomorphism, 103, 104, 105,
energy, 179, 180
106, 107, 108, 116, 123, 125,
Enlightenment, 9, 79, 146, 176,
127, 161, 166, 168, 169, 177,
189
178, 180, 182, 192
ens rationis, 142
experience, 17, 18, 23, 24, 31,
Enuma Elish, 47
32, 35, 62, 79, 95, 104, 105,
environment, 15, 17, 22, 60, 70,
117, 127, 141, 143, 154, 175,
113, 165, 175
177, 182, 188
Epicure, 25, 60, 181
anthropological, 32
epilepsy, 156
227
General Index
historical, 88 Gallese, V., 175

human, 90, 164 games, 104
liminal, 104, 159, 165, 166, Ganesh, 33
184 Garcilaso, Inca, 55
psychological, 32, 62, 157 Gea, 49, 52
ordinary, 141, 142, 156, 166, Genesis, 38, 44, 50, 52
183 genius, 29, 81, 84, 145, 176
religious, 26, 32, 57, 99 George-kanentiio, 40
revolutionary, 183 German Romanticism, 84
ritual, 116 Gnosticism, 129
social, 99, 103, 192 God, 16, 42, 50, 73, 86, 148
spatiotemporal, 98 goddess, 39, 47, 54, 56, 104,
vital, 26, 103, 140, 159, 166 153, 182
eye of Ra, 102, 103, 106, 166 Gödel, K., 73
god, 17, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 33,
F 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42,
43, 45, 47, 49, 52, 53, 54, 56,
faculty, 82, 176, 187
57, 58, 59, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69,
fertility, 35, 39
70, 73, 79, 82, 87, 89, 91, 93,
fetish, 33, 38
99, 101, 102, 103, 107, 108,
Feuerbach, L., 57, 60, 63, 65
111, 114, 117, 123, 126, 130,
final referents, 22, 37, 65, 68,
131, 141, 148, 149, 153, 155,
73, 93, 164, 168, 173, See
156, 161, 162, 163, 166, 167,
also exomorphism
168, 174, 176, 179, 180, 181,
Finnish, 54, 138, 135
182, 184, 191
Finn-Ugrian, 36, 52, 115
Good and Evil, 42, 46
formalization, 182
Good Mind, 44
Frankfurt School, 69
Göram, S., 150
Frazer, J., 47, 61, 115, 152
Gospel, 75, 122, 148
Friedrich, C., 85
Grant, M., 122
functional determination, see
Great Britain, 139
economic determination
Greece, 37, 44
Greek, 21, 25, 30, 36, 46, 47, 54,
G
73, 106, 112, 131, 137, 151,
Galileo, 73 158, 161, 165, 167
228
General Index
Green, D. H., 91 Historiography, 119, 128, 131,

Grey, G., 39 132, 142, 143, 144
Guarani, 36, 53 history, 11, 18, 27, 35, 38, 55,
Guthrie, W.K.C., 54 63, 82, 86, 87, 89, 91, 101,
111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116,
H 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 123,
124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129,
Habermas, J., 62, 63, 71, 188
130, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137,
Hafiz of Shiraz, 43
138, 140, 142, 143, 144, 146,
Hahgwehdiyu, 39
183, 189, 190, 192
Hallof, J., 52
History of Animals, 80
Han dynasty, 51
Hittite, 36, 46, 56
Heaven, 163
Hobbes, T., 61
Hegel, G.W.F., 65, 87, 88, 100,
Holy Spirit, 148
124, 128, 129, 133, 136, 137
Homer, 104, 148
Heilige, das, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31,
homo religiosus, 62
32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 62, 111,
Homo sapiens, 155
187, 188
Hopi, 49
Heliopolis, 36, 48, 56, 59
Hsü Yu, 120
Hellenistic mysteries, 44
Huitzlopochtli, 39
Heraclitus, 141, 170
human communication, 74
Herder, J.G., 81, 82, 83, 84, 85,
human-divine, 43, 57, 58, 60, 84,
86, 87, 90, 94, 95, 96, 107,
188, 190
190, 191
humanism, 66, 100
Hermes, 44
Hunapu and Xbalanque, 57
Hermopolis, 36, 44, 48
Hunhun-Apu, 56
hero, 37, 67, 68, 113, 121, 122,
Huracan, 45
123, 155
Husserl, E., 63
Herodotus, 128
Hyperion, 106, 107
Hesiod, 49, 56, 72
hypostasis, 59, 60, 74, 92, 98,
Hinduism, 26, 36, 43, 46, 50,
101, 116, 133, 137, 177, 178,
129, 132
187, 190
Hiranyagharba, 54
historical fact, 121, 124
I
historical necessity, 113, 143
historical perspective, 24 I Ching, 162, 163, 167
229
General Index
Ibn Arabi, 43 intelligence, 12, 22, 59, 68, 69,

idealism, 30, 65, 86, 88, 101, 77, 174, 191
108, 139, 176 interpretation, 16, 23, 32, 34, 36,
identity, 9, 11, 15, 16, 17, 21, 61, 77, 78, 82, 88, 91, 96,
24, 25, 26, 43, 45, 50, 59, 60, 100, 101, 109, 116, 121, 123,
71, 74, 90, 99, 111, 117, 126, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 132,
127, 130, 134, 135, 136, 137, 154, 160, 161, 162, 163, 176,
138, 139, 140, 143, 144, 145, 180, 183
146, 148, 149, 151, 152, 154, intuition, 15, 30, 31, 48, 58, 85,
155, 158, 160, 170, 188, 189, 90, 113, 118, 131, 132, 143,
191, 192, 193, 195 151, 162, 171, 172, 173, 184,
ideology, 36, 69, 125, 134, 143, 185, 194, 195
64 Iranian, 36, 38, 44, 115, 134
Ife, 53 Ireland, 140
illusion, 41, 99, 142, 177 Iroquois, 36, 39, 40
Ilmatar, 54 Islam, 26, 36, 44, 115
immortality, 67, 164 Isle of Fire, 48
Inca, 55 Israel, 68, 122
indefinite, 40, 48, 106, 185, 194
India, 33, 37, 38, 42, 44, 49 J
Indian, 31, 33, 36, 42, 45, 120,
Jainism, 34, 38, 36, 99, 136
122, 181, 182
Janamejaya, 149
individual, 32, 38, 42, 59, 63,
Jayarasi, 181
65, 99, 115, 120, 121, 126,
Jiva, 38, 132
137, 148, 149, 151, 157, 158,
Judaism, 26, 31, 44, 129
161, 166, 172, 180
Jung, C., 64, 66, 88
indivisible whole, 142
justice, 72
Indonesia, 56
Indra, 37, 46, 47, 148
K
Industrial Revolution, 137
inference, 68, 176, 182 Kabbalah, 42, 50
initial conditions, 143 Kalevala, 55, 135, 136,
inspiration, 12, 148, 150, 151, Kali, 182
159, 176 Kaluza space, 141, 142
Kami, 49
230
General Index
Kandel, E.R., 126 Lemmikainen, 115

Kant, I., 23, 28, 29, 30, 31, 60, León- Portilla, M., 49
81, 84, 85, 86, 87, 92, 97, Leví-Strauss, C., 63, 135
114, 144, 176, 187, 194 Lichtheim, M., 44
karma, 132 liminal, 9, 107, 108, 116, 123,
Kauravas, 149 156, 157, 158, 159, 161, 165,
Kautilyia, 132 166, 168, 172, 173, 175, 177,
Kerenyi, C., 64 179, 181, 182, 184, 185, 192,
Khnum, 52 193, 194, 195, 183
Kingu, 37 liminoid, 158, 168, 169, 173,
Kirk, G.S., 170 177, 183, 185, 193, 194
Kline, M., 73 limit, 35, 59, 99, 104, 107, 108,
knowledge, 10, 23, 25, 26, 28, 112, 113, 141, 142, 155, 157,
29, 30, 35, 62, 63, 64, 79, 90, 165, 184, 185, 192, 193, 194,
100, 101, 137, 149, 154, 160, 195
164, 165, 167, 168 179, 180, linguistic, 11, 17, 18, 60, 72, 73,
181, 191, 192, 193 78, 79, 82, 83, 84, 92, 93, 94,
Kono, 46 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 103, 104,
Koran, The, 75, 115, 148 106, 107, 108, 109, 116, 121,
Krishna, 31, 68, 149 135, 137, 149, 166, 173, 177,
Kuhn, T., 69 190, 191, 192, 194
Kumarbi, 56 logic, 30, 73, 167, 173
logos, 9, 59, 76, 165, 170, 173,
L 194
Logos, 75, 79, 190
language origin, 71, 80, 81, 150,
Logos spermatikos, 59, 75
191
Lokayata, 181, 182, 194
law, 16, 22, 65, 72, 80, 83, 87,
Lönnrot, E., 55, 115, 135, 148
93, 113, 131, 144, 152, 162,
Lords of Duality, 49
163, 166, 173, 174, 178
Lorenz, E., 143
Law, 122
Lucretius, 180, 194, 181
Laws, 86, 151, 164
lyric, 61
Lebenswelt, 63, 66, 73, 94, 108,
116, 124, 142, 143, 156, 158,
M
161, 185, 192, 193, 195
Leibniz, G.W., 73, 119 macroanthropos, 42
231
General Index
Magna Mater, 48 metaphor, 15, 18, 45, 91, 92, 93,

Mahabharata, 149 94, 95, 96, 98, 99, 101, 102,
Maharshi, R., 165 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108,
Manco Capac, 55 109, 124, 434, 141, 156, 173,
Mapuche, 36, 37, 47 178, 179, 180, 183, 184, 191,
Marduk, 37, 46, 114, 179 192
Mars, 93 metaphysics, 23, 25, 26, 27, 35,
Martin, B., 57, 64, 161 36, 86, 124, 132, 187, 188
Maruts, 150 metron, 26
Marx, K., 133 Mexico, 39, 40
Marxist, 122, 125, 133 Middle East, 135
Mashye and Mashyane, 115 Mill, J.S., 125
materialism, 28, 57, 61, 89, 100, mimesis, 9, 18, 61, 78, 81, 86,
133, 144, 181, 183, 180 149, 150, 151, 167, 168, 172,
mathematics, 72, 73, 74, 151, 173, 174, 181, 185, 189
170, 194, 141 formal, 164, 165, 166
matter, 39, 44, 51, 53, 57, 85, liminal, 161, 172, 173, 177,
89, 141, 178, 179, 180, 183, 185
184, 178 liminoid, 173, 194
Maui, 67, 68 oracular, 162, 163, 164, 170,
Maya, 36, 45, 56 172, 174
Mbitu, N., 40, 53 shamanic, 155, 164, 165, 170
Me, 131 Minoan, 36, 153
media, 144, 145, 158 Mnemosine, 112
Medieval, 50, 78, 136, 168, 78, Mohammed (Prophet), 148
168 Montesquieu, C., 61
Melanesian, 36, 56, 117 moral, 25, 39, 84, 88, 91, 92,
memory, 50, 104, 117, 119, 122, 103, 139, 158, 159, 164, 176,
123, 128, 129, 130, 131, 148, 177, 181, 191
151, 190, 193, 126 morphism, 9, 41, 58, 105, 151,
Memphis, 22, 36, 44 167, 173, 195
mental instinct, 91 auto-morphism, 41, 43, 58
mero-anthropic, 40, 57 isomorphism, 41, 42, 43, 58
Mesopotamia, 43 morphism of infinitude, 41,
43
232
General Index
theo-morphism, 46 mythologization process, 107,

Moses, 122, 148 108, 111, 125, 126, 135, 138,
Mot, 48, 53, 115 143, 144, 161, 169, 177, 180,
M-Theory, 184 192, 193, 194, 195
Mudrooroo, N., 45, 50 mythology, 9, 11, 15, 16, 17, 22,
Muisca, 36, 45 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 36, 40,
Müller, M., 88, 90, 91, 92, 93, 41, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 51, 52,
95, 96, 100, 101, 103, 106, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 67,
107, 108, 119, 191 69, 73, 76, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87,
Muse, 149, 159, 160, 181 88, 90, 91, 92, 103, 104, 106,
music, 61, 151, 164, 154, 160, 108, 113, 114, 115, 116, 125,
181 126, 129, 131, 134, 135, 136,
mysterium estupendum et 145, 148, 159, 156, 184, 185,
tremendum, 31 188, 189, 190, 191
mystery, 35, 51, 170, 184 mythopoetics, 12, 140
mysteries, 26, 44, 64, 115
mystical, 42, 43, 137, 159, 184 N
myth, 9, 10, 15, 16, 17, 18, 22,
Nanapesa, 52
23, 24, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 44,
Nanih Waiyah, 52
45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53,
narrative, 15, 16, 17, 21, 22, 24,
54, 55, 56, 58, 60, 68, 71, 72,
25, 36, 37, 38, 45, 46, 48, 50,
74, 76, 84, 87, 90, 92, 93, 94,
56, 57, 58, 74, 75, 111, 115,
95, 97, 99, 100, 112, 115,
117, 121, 122, 125, 126, 130,
117, 118, 121, 122, 127, 134,
131, 136, 143, 145, 146, 151,
135, 137, 138, 140, 145, 147,
156, 188, 193
149, 158, 180, 181, 185, 188,
archaic, 24, 25
189, 190, 191, 195
foundational, 71
definition, 9, 74, 134, 188,
historical, 111, 113, 118,
195
124,, 142, 143, 144, 146,
Mythic Domain, 9
192
mythico-ritual, 12, 44, 74, 96,
identity, 11, 25, 90, 134, 188,
145, 155, 158, 168, 193
193
mythologems, 66
morphology, 47
mythological traditions, 17, 24,
51, 55, 74, 179
233
General Index
mythic, 22, 23, 29, 31, 32, 37, O

60, 111, 118, 127, 133,
Obatala, 40, 53
134, 191
objective, 10, 27, 99, 113, 116,
of creation, 44
120, 158, 165, 170, 185
ontotheological, 43
Ocampo López, J., 45
structure, 122
Odin, 41
n-ary, 11
Oduduwa, 53
national, 33, 135, 140, 145
Ogdoad, 36, 48, 53
Native Americans, 24, 52, 53
Olodumare, 53
naturalism, 80, 178, 179, 182,
Olympic, 36, 49, 104
194
Om, 45, 59, 75, 77, 190
nature, 30, 32, 36, 37, 57, 59, 63,
oneiric, 27, 28, 32
70, 75, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 83,
ontoanthropological, 65
85, 86, 87, 95, 99, 103, 104,
ontoepistemology, 12, 23, 25,
159, 165, 166, 167, 174, 176,
26, 36, 65, 99, 112, 114, 128,
181, 188, 189, 190
136, 143, 147, 184, 185, 192
Navaho, 36, 40
ontology, 10, 17, 22, 23, 28, 35,
Near East, 46, 52, 122, 123, 130,
37, 39, 42, 43, 47, 57, 59, 60,
131
67, 69, 73, 86, 88, 90, 91, 96,
necessity, 23, 80, 81, 82, 87, 92
103, 104, 107, 113, 123, 126,
113, 114, 137, 143, 170, 172,
141, 164, 167, 170, 183, 187,
175, 176, 178, 193
188
Neolithic, 113, 155
ontotheology, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46,
Neoplatonism, 129
51, 58, 60, 64, 66, 67, 72, 74,
neuroscience, 126
84, 89, 90, 109, 163, 174
Nietzsche, F., 62, 99, 100, 101,
oracle, 40, 130, 144, 161, 162,
103, 108, 177, 178, 179, 180,
163, 164, 172, 170
194
organism, 77, 189
Nobile, L., 80
origin of language, 75, 76, 77,
non-being, 46, 50, 51
78, 79, 82, 86, 91, 93, 108,
Nordic, 22, 36, 41
176, 189
number, 44, 64, 73, 93, 118,
origins, 15, 17, 36, 37, 48, 50,
163, 171, 179
58, 111, 118, 124, 126, 128,
numinous, 31, 62, 66
135, 142, 146, 148, 162, 177,
188
234
General Index
orography, 22, 40, 41 physis, 22, 57, 59, 60, 118, 173,
Orpheus, 54, 151 194
Orphic, 36, 53, 54 Pindar, 151
Orunmila, 40 plank’s era, 141
Osiris, 26, 102, 115 Plato, 25, 76, 78, 85, 102, 151,
Otto, R., 29, 30, 31, 66, 187 159, 164, 165, 166, 172, 190
Platonic, 66, 77, 159, 173, 165,
P 170
Platonist, 10, 65, 67, 73, 78, 96
Pachacamac, 39, 55
Plotinus, 78, 79
Paleolithic, 154
poet, 16, 123, 137, 148, 157,
Pan Gu, 40, 54
158, 159, 160, 164, 174
pan-anthropic, 40, 57
poetry, 84, 112
Pandavas, 149
political, 43, 65, 70, 72, 74, 128,
Para-Brahman, 50, 51, 185
135, 136, 137, 139, 140, 144,
paradox, 24, 74, 75, 76, 78, 80,
165, 172, 138, 183
93, 101, 109, 141
politics, 122
Persian, 43
Prakriti, 59
persona, 121, 148, 168
praxis, 35, 116, 128, 137, 160
personality, 16, 121, 155, 157,
Pre-Socratic, 119, 170
160, 164
primitive determination, 59, 168,
phantasmagoria, 61, 62, 100,
179, 116
127
primordial, 47, 52, 53, 106
Phenician, 36
chaos, 40, 46, 47, 49, 51
philosophy, 25, 26, 30, 35, 64,
egg, 53
72, 76, 85, 89, 128, 151, 159,
fire, 119
167, 176, 182, 185, 189
forms, 48
idealist, 188
giant, 54
natural, 80
gods, 37
of history, 128, 130, 133,
human, 38, 39, 52, 55, 58
143, 144, 146
language, 82
of language, 189
substance, 53
of mythology, 82, 87, 90, 136
time, 60
of religion, 11, 17, 29
waters, 47, 54
social, 128
word, 45
Phrygian, 36, 56
235
General Index
principle, 23, 37, 38, 41, 42, 43, Q

49, 50, 60, 67, 68, 72, 83, 85, 88,
quantum physics, 10
89, 101, 136, 137, 149, 152, 165,
Quechua, 36, 39, 55
167, 168, 178, 180, 182, 190
Quine, W.V. O., 69, 141
divine, 53
human, 37, 38, 40, 58, 60
R
moral, 25, 92
of causality, 152, 154 Ra, 48, 52, 56, 102, 103, 106,
of contradiction, 37 radical metaphor, 96, 98
of diffuse identity, 45 Ragnarok, 23
of identity, 99 ratio, 168
of intuition, 90 rational psychology, 28, 72, 77,
of solidarity, 152, 171, 172, 80, 81, 82, 84, 92, 93, 94,
173 175, 189, 191, 195
ontological, 35 rationality, 11, 12, 29, 63, 81,
regulative, 66 83, 90, 108, 112, 191
sameness, 152, 153, 170 reality, 29, 31, 32, 35, 41, 49,
theological, 36, 89 62, 77, 81, 84, 89, 90, 96, 99,
universal, 32, 182 127, 155, 185
process of divinization, 108 reason, 23, 28, 35, 72, 81, 82,
process of symbolization, 45, 98, 83, 85, 90, 92, 94, 96, 113,
190, 191, 192 164, 168, 181, 183, 184, 187
Prometheus, 67, 114, 104 Reichard, G.A., 40
prophet, 65 reification, 32, 98, 108 See also
Protagoras, 25 hypostasis
Ptah, 22, 44, 59, 75 Relativity, Theory of, 102
Pueblo, 36 resurrection, 102, 115
purpose, revelation, 22, 23, 66, 81, 85, 88,
biological, 124 100, 115
historical, 86, 124 rhetoric, 25, 106, 122
transcendental, 125 Rigveda, 38, 41, 47, 54, 148, 181
universal, 176 ritual, 11, 16, 26, 33, 45, 64,
Purusha, 38, 39, 40, 44, 59 116, 117, 120, 138, 154, 155,
Pythagoras, 151 156, 157, 158, 160, 161, 162,
236
General Index
165, 167, 140, 154, 155, 160, anthropological, 82,

181 biological, 78
animal, 11, geological, 119, 160
canibalistic, 32 historical, 135, 142, 144
initiatory, 25, mathematical, 194
sexual, 32 mythological, 9 , 72, 90,
Rome, 32, 44, 93 physical, 89,
Rouget, G., 160 religion, of, 100
Rousseau, J.J., 79, 80, 81, 93 social, 69, 113
Rumi, J., 43 Scotus Eriugena, J., 168
Russell, B., 50 self-criticism, 191
self-identity, 189
S semantics, 10, 11, 24, 78, 80, 94,
96, 105, 123, 150, 162, 172,
Sa, 46
176, 184, 185, 192, 193, 194,
sacred, 27, 32, 33, 35, 39, 40,
195
67, 73, 77, 91, 114, 115, 116,
semen, 53, 56, 59
129, 158, 159, 166, 167
semi-god, 108
sacrifice, 32, 38, 167
Semitic, 41, 46
saliva, 56
sensible, 62, 78, 84, 85
Samkya, 26, 59, 167
sequential, 15, 106, 107, 126,
Sanai, 43
192
Sankara, 42, 50, 165
set theory, 171
Schaff, A., 118
sexual, 47, 48, 49, 56, 58, 178
Schelling, F.W.J., 65, 66, 67, 85,
Shalmaneser, 122, 123
86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 95, 96,
shaman, 16, 16, 120, 148, 149,
100, 101, 103, 124, 129, 133,
151, 154, 155, 156, 157, 159,
136, 146, 190
160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165,
Schiller, F., 138
166, 167, 170, 193
Scholem, G., 50
Shinto, 36, 49
Schopenhauer, A., 99, 177
Shiva, 33
science, 10, 22, 23, 24, 35, 61,
Siberia, 154
62, 68, 69, 73, 89, 90, 99,
Sibyl, 161, 163
107, 113, 117, 118, 124, 126,
Siegel, D.J., 126
128, 135, 141, 147, 164, 168,
Sky, 39, 40, 49, 52, 53
179, 183, 184, 185,
237
General Index
Snorri Sturluson, 148 languages, 167

social persona, 121 metaphors, 93
society, 21, 22, 27, 44, 50, 62, naturalism, 178
63, 67, 80, 86, 89, 128, 134, system, 10,
139, 141, 145, 155, 157, 158, syntax, 172
161
Socrates, 159 T
Solar Bird, 55
tales, 15, 16, 17, 21, 25, 26, 27,
Soldano, H., 47
32, 36, 38, 40, 44, 45, 47, 49,
Solon, 72
51, 53, 56, 57, 58, 68, 88, 91,
soul, 27, 28, 77, 78, 82, 83, 132,
92, 93, 108, 115, 121, 123,
139, 164, 165, 190
126, 127, 133, 136, 147, 148,
Southwest Polynesia, 56
149, 155, 163
Spariosu, M., 150
Talmud, 167
spatiotemporal, 153, 171, 172
Tantra, 32, 49, 54
Ssu-Ma-Chien, 47,120, 127
Tao, 49
subatomic particle, 105, 184
Taoism, 26, 51
subjective, 27, 95, 121, 178
Tarski, A., 10
Sufism, 42
Tatarkiewicz, W., 150
Sumer, 22, 36, 37, 41, 46, 47,
tautegorical, 87, 103, 190
131
Tennyson, A., 139
superesse, 50
Tenochtitlan, 39, 55
supernatural, 25, 27, 31, 32, 33,
Tenten Vilu, 47
35, 36, 58, 66, 82, 83, 85, 92,
terrible presence, 31, 32
103, 106, 126, 129, 130, 140,
The Five Suns, 49
148, 149, 151, 155, 156, 164,
theatre, 138, 140
165, 166, 167, 174, 179, 180,
Thebes, 36, 52
181, 183, 188
theomorphosis, 41, 43
Supreme Being, 59, 66, 180
Thou, 31, 57, 161
symbol, 93, 135, 139
Thucydides, 114, 127
symbolic, 45, 62, 74, 131, 170,
Tiamat, 37, 47, 48
178
Timaeus, 166
calulus, 173
time, 17, 30, 48, 67, 69, 88, 98,
construction, 11, 16, 63, 185
114, 120, 122, 123, 127, 128,
development, 11, 12, 79
238
General Index
131, 133, 136, 143, 152, 153, universal process of

158, 175, 179 disenchantment, 63
cyclical, 117, 129 Upanishad, 45, 50, 54, 59
end of, 55 Uranus, 56
geological, 128
historical, 89, 129, 138 V
linear, 117, 129
Vaisampayana, 149
Titans, 49, 112
validity, 17, 28, 31, 91, 93, 139,
Titicaca, 55
142
Tiwi, 50
Valmiki, 148
Tlaloc, 39
valuation, 15, 34, 94, 113, 127,
Tonacatepetl, 39
149, 195
totem, 52, 74, 75, 154
epistemological, 10
Toynbee, A.J., 134, 146
nihilist, 61
tragedy, 112, 158, 138
ontological, 22, 28
transcendental, 10, 23, 28, 29,
vital, 35
30, 31, 64, 65, 66, 69, 72, 74,
Varuna, 46
75, 76, 79, 82, 83, 84, 86, 87,
Veda, 167
89, 90, 91, 93, 96, 109, 124,
Vedanta, 26, 41, 51, 60, 75, 77,
134, 144, 166, 172, 173, 175,
165
176, 177, 180, 183, 185, 188,
Vietnam, 36, 54
189, 190, 191, 192
Viracocha, 55
truth, 10, 25, 60, 91, 117, 120,
Virgil, 148
137, 165, 166, 170
Vishnu, 36, 43, 101, 180
Turk-Mongol, 36, 52, 154
vital fluids, 55, 56
Turner, V., 157, 161
Vohu Mana, 44
Tutmosis II, 122
Volk, 136, 137, 138, 139
Tylor, E.B., 27, 61
Vrta, 37, 47
Typhon, 37, 47
Vyasa, 148, 149
U
W
Ugarit, 46, 115
Wagner, R., 122, 137, 138
Ugrasravas, 149
Weber, M., 63, 183, 191
Ullikummi, 56
Weltanschauung, 127, 188
universal locality, 24
239
General Index
Weltseele, 89, 101, 190, 191 Y

Wilhelm, R and H., 162, 163
Yahweh, 16, 44, 79, 122
will to power, 100, 101, 103,
Yao, 37, 47, 121
177, 178, 179
Yeats, W.B., 140
Wind, 48
Yggdrassil, 23
Wort der Seele, 81
Ymir, 22, 40, 41
writing, 45, 119, 122, 130, 131,
Yoruba, 36, 40, 53
134, 147, 148, 160, 161, 162,
Yu, 47
163
Wu Xiaodong, 40
Z
X Zarathustra, 42, 44
Zeus, 37, 46, 47, 54, 56, 72, 142,
Xibalba, 56
166
Xquiq, 56
Zoroastrian, 42, 46, 167
Zulu, 44
240

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Mythopoetics

THE SYMBOLIC CONSTRUCTION

Translated by Nur Ferrante

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the

Translation of: Mitopoética: La construcción simbólica de la identi-

National Library of Spain Card No. M-35129-2013

Cover design: Reiko Iwane.

VOLUME I: MYTHIC DOMAIN

VOLUME III: MYTHICO-RITUAL AXES

previous introduction of the conceptual tools presented in this

I understand philosophical action as a dual process of axi-

derstand mythico-ritual structures, defined and dealt with in

Avila, July 15th 2013.

Mythological narratives are the only intellectual activity

thought permeated by notions whose origin is mythological.

tion that is continued in all spheres of social life. The majority

tic vantage point, revising the most relevant theses postulated

Men, Gods and Myths

1.1 Pre-Scientific Ontoepistemologies

Anthropological studies show that every known human

today), sprang from this anthropomorphic being, the ontology

totelian sense, an study of being qua being,4 since in myth

Functional similarities among the ancestors and gods at the

same geographical locations and in the same days of the year.

A candidate as conceptual referent that may clarify the

The concept of das Heilige as something mysterious and

analyzable and derivable from others still more basic, some-

find such qualifications, but not necessarily a deliberate intel-

petition and involve questions of wide social identities, shows

links the concept of das Heilige to that of authority, from

separation of the sphere of mythology in relation to the sphere

1.3 Four Traditional Ontoepistemological

A second possible candidate as conceptual referent for the

very easily interchange their identities and are hybridized,

places another element at the center. In traditional myths, we

by any type of divine being, but by a self-contained spiritual-

mother, Atahensic. 34 In another version of the same myth,

where the equality of the principle of the transpersonal god,

human-divine identity, as the one discussed by Ibn Arabi,46 or

it may be one of subordination- by which it obtains entity.

sponding to the constructions of a universal city. In Hindu

are considered as variants of a common divine force. In these

the rest of the creation story a totally anthropomorphic dy-

the non-thinkable and indefinite, to the apeiron, all those

of death.67 In Olympic mythology, accepted at this point by

with chaotic characteristics, prior to memory, from which

(The Náhuatl Philosophy Studied in its Sources). U.N.A.M. México.1966.

lent can be found in classical Taoism, and afterwards, over-

without attributes. In Brahma Sutras. Ed. Swami Vireswarananda. Advainta

in the biblical Genesis, and in the Native American,78 Finn-

as matter to create the first ancestors, who become Choctaw

ogy, Chronos creates a silver cosmic egg from which Phanes

Anthropology. Vol. 32. Number 2. April, 1991. The University of Chicago

are incubated.94 And in the Estonian mythological tradition it

The creation by the action of vital fluids, semen, blood or

underworld), who becomes pregnant with the twins Hunapu

human principle is a whole or a part of creation, while in on-

ical content. Gods originate amongst themselves as well as

and unmovable concepts, substances which do not require an

onwards. In the modern world, the sociological science devel-

viewpoints, like that of Nietzsche, the myths of great religions

anthropology, 115 is Lebenswelt.116 Therefore, we can charac-

In the last six or seven decades we have completed the pic-